The Conference “In the end, the world got small – a brief journey through anthropological conceptions of space” by Filomena Silvano will take place on the 4th of april, at 18h30, at Porto Municipal Theatre - Rivoli. The event is part of the VI Conference Cycle Lusófona University / Rivoli 'Espaços, lugares e territorialidades' [Spaces, places and territorialities], organized by CICANT researchers Isabel Babo, Manuel Bogalheiro and Universidade Lusófona's Dean José Bragança de Miranda.
Synopsis
Anthropology thought, from the beginning, of space from two modalities that, in a certain way, opposed each other. One can be called the “rooting modality” and the other the “cosmopolitan modality”. The first privileges the idea of place and is attentive to the relationships of belonging that people establish with space. The second privileges the idea of movement and is interested in the cultural forms that result from the mobility of people. In the 1990s, in the midst of globalization and in a period of critical dismantling of the political conditions for the production of anthropological knowledge, mobility emerged as a determining factor for understanding the relationships that people establish with space. But the ecological crisis and the pandemic have shown us that, from close to close, we are all connected, and revealed to us that the space we inhabit is, after all, small. In a certain sense, we ended up returning to the modality of rooting, but aware that it now concerns the totality of the fragile skin of the earth where we live. The fantasy of escape, which the modality of cosmopolitanism had granted us, can no longer exist. We are incarcerated in a place that will be what we manage to make of it.
Biography
Filomena Silvano
Filomena Silvano is an anthropologist, professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA FCSH) and member of the Center for Research in Anthropology (CRIA-NOVA FCSH) and of the Unité de Recherche Migrations et Société (URMIS).
In her work, she links issues of collective and individual identity with the study of space, material culture and expressive culture. She collaborated with filmmakers João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata. She did ethnography at the atelier of fashion designer Filipe Faísca. She is the author of the books "Territorios da Identidade", "Antropologia do Espaço", "From House to House: About a Meeting between Ethnography and Cinema", "Antropology of Fashion" and "Antropology of Material Life – writings about spaces, things and people ".