Title: Migration, War, and Far right extremism in Greece and beyond
Speaker: Dr Tryfon Bampilis, cultural anthropologist, Netherlands Institute at Athens (NIA)
Date: 9 October, 15:30-17:00
Venue: University of Amsterdam (UvA), PCH building, room PCH 1.04, Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam
Language: English
Abstract
Concern with the emergence of far right parties has risen to the political fore in Europe in the last decades. Europe finds itself caught in a continuous crisis that is not only economic but more importantly cultural, social and political. Elements of all these crises are articulated and reproduced in processes of nationalist self-representation and othering as well as in the practices and agency of far-right organizations or parties. Despite the growing support of far right parties in various countries of Europe, little scholarship has investigated ethnographically the practice and agency of far right politics. More specifically not much attention has been paid to the actual experiences and social life of such members and the ways that their actions, conviction and dispositions interrelate with far right politics. By using material from a project that focused on the Greek case of the neo nazi party Golden Dawn (Hrisi Avgi), the lecture will focus on their past successes and failures, the past and current relationship of right politics to diversity and migration and the possible connections of extremism and neonazism with the current global wars taking place.
Bio
Bampilis work has focused on material culture and globalization, migration, political anthropology, and multimodal ethnography. He is specialized in the effects of modernity in contemporary European societies, with a focus on commodities, death rituals, nationalism and far-right extremism. As a cultural anthropologist Bampilis has written a historized ethnography of modern Greece on the changing consumption patterns of alcohol. He is especially interested in modernization and social change, critical anthropology, and coloniality. Over the past fifteen years, Bampilis has established and taught in a program that bridges traditional ethnography with migration studies, heritage and materiality and multimodal methodology at the Netherlands Institute at Athens (NIA).