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Letizia Bonanno: Vignettes from Athens: on care, ethnography and drawing

Datum
05. März 2025 

Webi­nar of the series „Images, Age­ing and Care”


Letizia Bonan­no: „Vignettes from Athens: on care, ethnog­ra­phy and drawing”
Tenth webi­nar of the series „Images, Age­ing and Care”
March 5th (Wednes­day) at 17:00 – 18:30 CET/ 16:00- 17:30 GMT/ 8:00 – 9:30 PST/ 11:00–12:30 EST, on Zoom. 

ABOUT THE TALK

In this pre­sen­ta­tion, the speak­er will share ethno­graph­ic vignettes from their research on recon­fig­u­ra­tions of care in aus­ter­i­ty-strick­en Athens. She will dis­cuss how drawing—rather than sole­ly writing—fieldnotes sharp­ened their per­cep­tion and enabled new forms of reflex­iv­i­ty, fos­ter­ing a crit­i­cal explo­ration of their sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and posi­tion­al­i­ty as an ethnographer.

Build­ing on Lisa Stevenson’s (2014) argu­ment that an “anthro­pol­o­gy through the image” shifts atten­tion to “imag­is­tic rather than dis­cur­sive modes of know­ing,” the speak­er will explore how visu­al approach­es can process expe­ri­ences that might oth­er­wise remain unex­am­ined in ethnog­ra­phy. Sim­i­lar­ly, draw­ing on Michael Taussig’s (2011) claim that sketch­es offer a unique imme­di­a­cy in ethno­graph­ic under­stand­ing, they will exam­ine how draw­ing inter­venes in the reck­on­ing of real­i­ty in ways that writ­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy do not.

The talk will con­sid­er the forms of under­stand­ing that drawing—both as an act and a practice—can afford and the access it pro­vides to alter­na­tive per­spec­tives. The speak­er will describe draw­ing as a medi­um for (self)invention, a way of visu­al­iz­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties, a method of decep­tion, and a cre­ative act that manip­u­lates real­i­ty. Ulti­mate­ly, they will illus­trate how draw­ing can serve as a pow­er­ful visu­al strat­e­gy to unrav­el com­plex­i­ties and chal­lenge pre­con­ceived notions of reality.

Argu­ing that draw­ing is more than a mere method­olog­i­cal tool, the speak­er will high­light its poten­tial to trig­ger mem­o­ries, evoke sub­jec­tive respons­es, uncov­er hid­den details, and envi­sion alter­na­tives. As both a per­cep­tive device and an ethno­graph­ic prac­tice, draw­ing recen­ters anthro­po­log­i­cal inquiry beyond text. To explore its poten­tial, the sem­i­nar will include prac­ti­cal exer­cis­es aimed at fos­ter­ing reflex­iv­i­ty and positionality—crucial ele­ments in any ethno­graph­ic endeavor..

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Letizia earned her PhD in Social Anthro­pol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter in 2019. Since then, she has held teach­ing and research posi­tions at var­i­ous British uni­ver­si­ties. For her doc­tor­al and post­doc­tor­al research projects, she con­duct­ed long-term ethno­graph­ic field­work in Athens (Greece), focus­ing on the recon­fig­u­ra­tions of modes and prac­tices of care with­in grass­roots, self-organ­ised health­care facilities.

She is cur­rent­ly a Senior Research Fel­low at the Depart­ment of Social and Cul­tur­al Anthro­pol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na, where she is devel­op­ing her new research project „Steel Life” on indus­tri­al labour and post-indus­tri­al futures in Taran­to (Italy) and Galați (Roma­nia). For this project, she has been award­ed the SEED Grant by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na and the Post-PhD Research Grant by the Wen­ner Gren Foun­da­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, Letizia has active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in schol­ar­ly dis­cus­sions on graph­ic anthro­pol­o­gy, writ­ings on its method­olog­i­cal and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal affor­dances. She is mem­ber of the edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive at Oth­er­wise Mag­a­zine, where she serves as a visu­al co-edi­tor, and she also co-edits the Anthro­pol­o­gy of Work Review.

ABOUT THE WEBINAR SERIES ON IMAGES, AGEING AND CARE

This webi­nar series – free and open to all- gath­ers anthro­pol­o­gists and image-mak­ers inter­est­ed in explor­ing the onto­log­i­cal and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal con­nec­tions between images, aging and care, treat­ing the rela­tion­ship and these phe­nom­e­na as requir­ing and invit­ing inter­ro­ga­tion. It is spon­sored by the Images of Care Col­lec­tive, the Asso­ci­a­tion for Anthro­pol­o­gy, Geron­tol­ogy and the Life Course (AAGE), EASA’s Age and Gen­er­a­tions Net­work (AgeNet) and the Net­work for Visu­al Anthro­pol­o­gy of the Euro­pean Asso­ci­a­tion of Social Anthro­pol­o­gists (VANEASA). You can see our past webi­na­rs here.

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