Chaired by: Selwyn, T.
Living On and Off the Sea: In memory of Jeremy Boissevain
Tom Selwyn
University of London
The panel will explore the relation between the sea and its coastal communities. Topics covered include local histories of maritime industries – including fishing and agriculture, oyster and shell fish production, foods of the sea, imagined land and sea scapes, coastal imagery and memorialisation, the material and symbolic place of coastal invaders/liberators/occupiers, coastal cities and their transformations, refugees and the sea, coastal tourism, seas and states, protecting the sea bed.
Transnational Solidarity Organizations in Greek coastal communities
Maria Kousis, Maria Paschou & Angelos Loukakis
In the past decade, coastal communities in Greece faced both the global economic as well as the refugee crises. This paper offers new findings from the (European Commission) TransSOL project on citizens’ transnational solidarity initiatives, organized outside of the state, and the ways in which they respond to the impacts of these crises. It aims to map and provide an exploratory account of Transnational Solidarity Organizations, the coastal communities they are based in, their constituency groups (beneficiaries and participants), as well as the ways in which their activities are situated and/or competing with tourism activities. The new primary data are based on a random sample of Transnational Solidarity Organizations (TSOs), which were active during the 2007-2016 period, as analyzed through their websites. (Themes 1+4) Key words: Transnational Solidarity Organizations, NGOs, solidarity groups, refugees, migration, Greece.
Civil society, government, and Oyster production on the Atlantic Coast.
Roger Steer and Brigitte Voland
This paper describes various modes of living off the sea in the region around Beauvoir-sur-mer (pop 4800) in the Atlantic coast of La Vendee, France. A brief contextual introduction will lead into more detailed description and analysis of local productive enterprises - including oyster production, salt production, and tourism, together with the ancillary industries of these. Special emphasis will be made on relations between such local production, associated supportive civil society formations (including the municipality of Beauvoir itself), as well as regional/central/EU government. Reference will be made to the Macron inspired cuts to local and regional services supported by the government. A conclusion will point towards lessons learnt in the region about relations between local economies and government (stream 1) key words: Oysters, salt, tourism, La Vendee.
Drink wine and look at the moon and think of all the civilisations the moon has seen passing by.” (The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam): Cultural Contexts of Mediterranean Wine Production
Rachel Radmilli
Wine provision and production has been an integral part of economic production and trade in the Mediterranean. The few references to wine discovered in the notarial archives dating to the Knights period in Malta provide clues to some of the first forms of insurance underwriting. These insurance policies covered the precious wine cargo being transported from Spain, France and Sicily to Malta supplying the Knights with wine of quality that was pleasing to their taste. Today wine of quality is being developed locally where entrepreneurial skill is adopted to create new forms of cultural resources. This presentation will discuss the centrality of such cultural resources to understanding coastal economies. (stream 1) key words: wine, Knights of Malta, cultural entrepreneurship, Malta.
Plenty of Fish in This Sea. Anthropological Reflection on Heritage-Making in the North Adriatic
Nataša Rogelja
This paper will investigate how people and fish interact with the maritime heritages of the north Adriatic, how they co-create these heritages and how they make a living out of them.
The paper presents the diversity (and divergence) of stakeholder ideas and images of ‘heritage’and/or ‘heritages’ within the North Adriatic region. Notions (routinely conjured up by observers) of the N.Adriatic as a culturally and geographically homogenous unit will be disentangled from the actual diversities of lives and cultures in the region. We will loosely focus on the eastern coast and seas of the North Adriatic, specific for its historical and cultural connections to the Western Balkans and the Mediterranean. With imagined land and sea scapes representing latent but potentially highly influential parts of the relationship people forge with the sea (including its fluid materiality, its flora and fauna), coastal areas and communities, the paper’s main aim is to highlight the formation of imagined ‘heritages’ imaginaries connected to the Adriatic and some of the implications of the diversity for heritage management. (stream 1) key words: fish, identity, heritage, Slovenia.
Coastal political economies in the Mediterranean
Raoul Bianchi
This paper looks at emerging political economies of Mediterranean cities in the light of socio-spatial restructuring, emigration and immigration, and new forms of investment cycles and the enterprises with which these are associated. Part of the essay will use the city of Malaga as a case study. Apart from its beauty, ignored for decades during the previous tourism booms as tourists landed and were ferried out to the various satellite resorts such as Torremolinos, Malaga was fairly run down and seedy. Having received injections of both public and private investment (the nature of which will be spelt out, the emergence of Air BnB, new art galleries and the requisite branding, it has been completely transformed – in many ways for the better but concealing myriad new divisions as well – which the paper will identify and explore analytically (stream 1) Key words: coastal cities, investment, culture, Spain.
Placing West African Refugees in Malta in their Economic and Cultural Context.
Paul Clough
This paper will focus on the nature of personal interactions between West African undocumented immigrants in Malta and their Maltese employers and friends. It will examine a small number of case studies from different West African countries. In each case study, it will explore the nature of the interaction between West Africans and Maltese in terms of the economic and cultural contexts that they actually share. On that basis, it will develop an argument that shows the extent to which West Africans are well embedded in Maltese society and the reasons why this is so. It will end by discussing the problems which hinder a deeper interaction. In keeping with our desire to honour the memory of Jeremy Boissevain and his style of anthropology, this paper will be empirical in its method and inductive in its logic. (stream 1) key words: refugees, integration, Malta.
