CRIA invites you to the next session of the Doctoral Seminar Series of the Circle for South Asian Studies (CEAS), to be held at Iscte. The session will feature a presentation by Lisa Spinelli (CRIA polo NOVA FCSH ), entitled:
“Addressing disagreement in fieldwork and beyond: Some internal conflicts of the Tibetan diaspora”
In anthropological analyses, we tend to sustain our research participants and to further their causes, whatever these might be. But what happens when we find ourselves at odds with some action or position, small or large, our participants undertake? From famous cases as Scheper-Hughes in her doctoral research in Ireland, to classic discussions concerning mutilations and cases of racism, anthropology is rife with such examples.
In my research, I work with Tibetan refugee communities in Kathmandu. I follow their lead in keeping a critical eye towards Chinese politics and its infiltration in Nepal, while praising the surprising democratic results reached in just a few decades by the Central Tibetan Administration. However, during my fieldwork, I couldn't but notice that the hard-core cultural policies of the latter concerning the maintenance of Tibetan traditional culture might be creating some conflicts and contradictions within the exile community.
In explicitly addressing similar issues, I might upset or outrage the people that made my research possible. In this intervention, I wish to explore this challenge and try to draft a few possible solutions.
This seminar series offers PhD students a space to meet and share their work—such as work-in-progress articles, thesis chapters, or projects—throughout the academic year. Each presenter should send their materials at least one week in advance in order to allow time for feedback from a designated discussant.
Each session will last 90 minutes: 40 minutes for the presentation; 10 minutes for the discussant’s comments; the remaining time will be open for discussion.
The seminar will be held in a hybrid format, but we strongly encourage those based in Lisbon to attend in person to help foster engagement and the success of the series.
The seminar may be conducted in English (preferably, to allow colleagues outside Portugal to participate) or in Portuguese.
Org. Daniela Bevilacqua, Giacomo Mantovan and Vera Lazzaretti
