This theme of research considers the notion of territory in a polysemantic perspective, from territories of implantation and ethnic stigmatization to territories of identity and exile, understood as a rootless experience. In a context of globalization and increased circulation of goods, ideas, and persons, relations between spaces and identities have acquired renewed functions and are used to perform new political and social roles. The concepts of “territoryâ€, “territoriality », and « territorialization », along with their derivatives, are mobilized in order to grasp these dynamics, which are apprehended in their historical context. They allow for an understanding of the behaviors, practices, and strategies implemented at different geographic and social levels- from village to diaspora, from individual to collective- in order to confront the radical transformations of spatial environments and contexts of identity.
We will study the social, cultural and political manifestations of these constricted relations between territorialities and identity formation. Anthropology, history and geography are mobilized in order to examine cases that involve Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, continents that will be examined in light of our cross analysis. This line of questioning will be organized around three directions of research: symbolic and memorial treatments of space and territories, in particular in the case of contemporary or recent traumas; the historical and contempory configurations inherited from slavery; the processes of appropriation and control of space.
The emphasis will be placed on the unspoken, the underlying, the subtleties of social imaginings and their political usages, in the aim of examining their relations to spaces and territories in a more sensitive and implicit manner. Rather than freezing identities in time and space, an entry through mobility allows us to envisage questions of memory and memorialization and their role as a tool of legitimization in a dynamic perspective.
Program 3.1. “Recurrences of slaveryâ€
Program 3.2. Anthropology of extreme exile
Program 3.3. Political use of space, relations of power, and identification
