Visitor address
Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains
Avenue Jeanne, 44
Bâtiment S
Bureau S12.113
1050 Bruxelles
Belgique
Mailing address
Université libre de Bruxelles
Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, 50 - CP 124
1050 Bruxelles
Belgique
Teaching
- Anthropologie économique - SOCA-D308 (lectured by Julie METAIS)
- Anthropologie sociale et culturelle I - SOCA-D174 (lectured by Olivia VIEUJEAN)
- Anthropologie du travail - SOCA-D4999 (lectured by Giulia MENSITIERI)
- Le capitalisme et les sciences sociales - SOCA-D3500 (with Joël Noret, lectured by Giulia MENSITIERI)
- Actualité de l'anthropologie - SOCA-D4992 (with Joël Noret, lectured by Giulia MENSITIERI)
Ongoing researches
My current research explores the manifold appreciation of agricultural plants. While the value of crop varieties is usually assessed in economic terms, I propose to also consider the ethical engagement that incentivises farmers to perpetuate flourishing agriculture. This will be achieved by producing interspecies ethnographies into seed-human relatedness - both affective and instrumental - in three agrobiodiversity hotspots: potato cultivation in Peru, maize in Mexico and rice in Laos. Prominent on global markets, also distinguished by international institutions as highly promising to reach global food security on our damaged planet, these crops are dear to the Indigenous people who cultivate and eat them daily. This research agenda contends that agriculture offers a unique ethnographic object to overcome the current split between the economic and the ethical studies on value, thereby contributing to the elaboration of a general anthropology of value still lacking to date.
FIELDS OF INTEREST
Ecology, agriculture, alimentation, agrobiodiversity, economic exchanges, barter, value, ethics, affect, nostalgia, Andes.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
2021-2026: European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-2020-STG 950220) at LAMC. "Flourishing Seeds. Value Creation and Relatedness in Agrobiodiversity Hotspots."
2020-2024 : FNRS PDR (35282336) at LAMC "Valuing Food Crops. Inquiry into Potato Cultivation in the Andean Highlands."
2014-2017: European Commission Marie Curie IEF (FP7-People-2013-IEF 627769) at Sociology of Development and Change Group – Wageningen University. "Cultural and Bio - diversity Protection through Heritage Policies. Andean Potatoes’ Regimes of Value in Protected Areas and Beyond."
2013-2014 : Département de Recherche International : Anthropologie et Histoire des Arts at Musée du quai Branly. "Circulation et valorisations des miniatures andines dans un paysage culturel de l’UNESCO."
2010-2012 : Wiener Anspach Foundation Postodoral Fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology – Oxford University. "Symbolic Economy of Barter. Ritualisation, Transmission and Instrumentalisation of Cambio in the Argentinean Andes."
Research Promotor
2020-2024. Céline MORANÇAY (PhD), FNRS PDR AgriValues, Relations agricoles dans des communautés paysannes des Andes péruviennes.
2021-2023. Owen MacNamara (Post-Doc), ERC Starting Grant SeedsValues, Maize-Human Relatedness in a Mexican Agrobiodiversity Hotspot.
2021-2025. Markus Enk (PhD), Fresh-FNRS, Kanamari Multispecies Foodscapes. The Socioecological Impacts of Industrialised Food in an Indigenous Community of the Javary Valley in Brazil.
2021-2025. Gabriel Roman (PhD), ERC Starting Grant SeedsValues, Maize-Human Relatedness in a Mexican Agrobiodiversity Hotspot.
2021-2025. Anna-Céline Sommerfeld (PhD), ERC Starting Grant SeedsValues, Rice-Human Relatedness in a Lao Agrobiodiversity Hotspot.
2021-2022. Joseph Martinez (PhD), Wiener Anspach Fellow, Finance at Land’s End : Campesino Struggles, Debt and Palm Oil Commodity Trading in Montes de María, Colombia.
Selected Publications
1. COLLECTIVE VOLUMES
- 2021, with D. Berliner. Ecological Nostalgias. Memory, affect and Creativity in Times of Earthly Upheavals. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
- 2016, with P. Pitrou. "Miniature Worlds : Variations of Scale in the Andes and Mesoamerica", Journal of Anthropological Research 72: 4.
- 2015, with D. Berliner. "Nostalgie", Terrain 65 : 4-11.
- 2014, with D. Berliner. Anthropology and Nostalgia. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
2. MONOGRAPH
- 2021, Barter and Social Regeneration in the Argentinean Andes (2nd edition), with foreword by James Carrier. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
- 2018, Barter and Social Regeneration in the Argentinean Andes. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
3. PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES
- 2022, "“To Give a Good Cambio”: Economic Affinity, Cheating and the Ambivalent Ethics of Barter in the Southern Andes", L’homme 243-244: 129-156.
- 2019, "Reproductive Commodities: Work, Joy, and Creativity in Argentinean Miniature Fairs", Ethnos : Journal of Anthropology 84: 241-262.
- 2018, "Interspecies Respect and Potato Conservation in the Peruvian Cradle of Domestication", Conservation and Society 16 (1): 30-40.
- 2016, "Materializing Virtues. Crafted Miniatures as Moral Examples in the Argentinean Andes", Journal of Anthropological Research 72(4): 483-503.
- 2016, with P. Pitrou. "Miniatures in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Theories of Life, Values and Relatedness", Journal of Anthropological Research 72(4): 408-415.
- 2016, "Barter Fairs, Ethnic Configuration and National Multiculturalism in the Argentinean Andes", Ethnos : Journal of Anthropology, 81 (4): 648-666.
- 2015, "Yapa. Ajándékok, cserék és összejátszás a Déli Andokban", Regio 23 (2): 186-211.
- 2015, with D. Berliner. "Pourquoi la nostalgie ?", Terrain 65 : 4-11.
- 2015, "Le goût d’autrefois. Pain au levain et attachements nostalgiques dans la société contemporaine", Terrain 65 : 34-51.
- 2015, "The Elders’ Measures. Barter, Value and Kinship in the Argentinean Andes", Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 20 (2): 359-378.
- 2012, "Instrumentalisation des énoncés nostalgiques dans les foires de troc andines", Terrain 59 : 152-167.
- 2011, "Yapa. Dons, échanges et complicités dans les Andes méridionales", Social Anthropology 19 (3): 239-253.
- 2007, "’Ici nous troquons ton désespoir pour de l’espérance...’ Approche ethnographique du troc urbain dans une société en crise", Civilisations 56 (1-2) : 63-85.
4. ARTICLES IN COLLECTIVE VOLUMES
- 2021, "Ethics of Work and Freedom in the Argentinean Andes: Value Creation and Virtuous Self-Crafting through Miniature Production," in Chris Hann (ed.) Work, Society, and Self. Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
- 2021, with D. Berliner. "Introduction" Ange and Berliner (eds), Ecological Nostalgias. Memory, Affect and Creativity in Times of Earthly Upheavals. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
- 2021, "Ecological Nostalgia and Interspecies Affect in the Highland Potato Fields of Cusco (Peru)", in Ange and Berlier (eds), Ecological Nostalgias. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
- 2014, with D. Berliner. "Introduction", in Angé and Berliner (eds), Anthropology and Nostalgia, pp.1-16. Oxford : Berghahn Books.
- 2014, "Social Performativity and Economic Efficacy of Nostalgic Narratives in the Southern Andes", in Angé and Berliner (eds), Anthropology and Nostalgia, pp.178-197. Oxford : Berghahn Books.
- 2014, "Manifold Barter. Heritagization of Economic Exchange in the Argentinean Andes", in Bondaz, et al. (eds), Local Vocabularies of Heritage, pp.187-204. Berlin : Lit Verlag.