In the face of challenges posed by climate change, sustainability promises to safeguard our collective future. But not all sustainability projects have a positive impact, and not everyone understands sustainability to mean the same thing. This is a story about Zenata, a much-celebrated Eco-City currently being built from scratch on a polluted stretch of coast in Morocco. Who benefits from such urban renewal projects and who gets left out? How sustainable is sustainability when it leads to displacement and reproduces inequalities? Answering these questions also points the way towards more inclusive methods for addressing the shared challenges posed by climate [...]

Explore the fusion of corporate anthropology, the business world and sustainable transformation. We’ve created and economy and society based on negative reciprocity, a culture of extraction. That means our challenge is not about more technology or new business cases but much more about people. About our belief systems and shared values that shape our societies. I propose to understand the sustainability transition as place of liminality, of not knowing, confusion and a power struggle. Learn how anthropological methods are harnessed to embed sustainability, circularity and impact into corporate culture – how dialogue, storytelling, and peer influence shape organizational DNA for [...]

In their exploration of wind energy in the Netherlands, Diny van Est, Anne Marieke Schwenke, and Noud Sleumer discuss the societal attitudes and challenges. Traditional windmills held local significance, unlike modern wind turbines which lack community ties. Resistance arises from concerns about visual pollution, lack of fairness, posing obstacles to wind projects. Sleumer’s installation aims to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity, aiming to reflect on our relation with renewable energy. Community energy cooperatives, like Rijnland Energy and Zuidenwind, involve residents in decision-making and profit-sharing, fostering community empowerment and strengthening the bond with wind infrastructure. The authors stress the [...]

This article examines the intersection of food poverty and sustainability through the work of The Waste To Success (TWTS), an organization offering sustainable cooking workshops at schools in the Netherlands. Using applied anthropology methods, the study explores the challenges of promoting sustainable food practices amongst students. Findings reveal a that despite sustainability teachings, students make choices that benefit themselves, insighting the need to align educational content with students’ lived experiences. The article offers recommendations for improving the impact of TWTS’s workshops, such as enhancing communication and incorporating culturally familiar recipes to promote sustainable and affordable cooking practices. Article by Lin [...]

The concept of “sustainability” is a must today: from the tiniest farming product or restaurant menu, to the multi-million-euro budget projects, “sustainable” needs to be on the front cover, on the label, in the main title. We got so used to the term that we hardly ever think what it actually means. The present essay discusses one of the most used misconceptions of sustainability in relationship to the “good old days” when life was said to be simpler, care free and consumerism was unheard of. The present essay uses the centuries-long history of fishing in an UNESCO biosphere reserve, the [...]

What are the ‘more-than-human’ experiences of life in a city? While modern urban planning policies focus on the need for green spaces in cities, these are usually controlled environments. However, nature encompasses ecosystems that may include elements often considered disruptive. The creatures we call pests have violated such notions of modernity as long as we have underestimated their disobedience, their relationship to urban politics, and the niche created for them by social inequality. The study of cockroaches offers insights into social dynamics, discourses, and political strategies. Different species of cockroaches, their ecosystems, and their interactions with humans and urban infrastructure [...]

Across the European Union, a youthful demographic (ages 15-34) is increasingly preoccupied with climate change and sustainability. Nevertheless, there is a significant gap between their intentions and actions, between what they would like to do and what they are able to do. Drawing on a more extensive study on climate change and youth in Romania and the EU, we focus on a problem space that centres around education as the main domain for co-productive interventions that could address this gap. In our research, when discussing youth engagement with climate change, the experts and young people interviewed champion education as a [...]

The protagonist of this story is Ana (a pseudonym), a Romanian domestic careworker, aged 45. Ana came to work in Italy in 2005 when she was 36 years old. She had no children of her own, but had a niece, whose university education she supported financially. When the niece finished university, and found employment, Ana would divide all the money that she gained every month (€600/month) in two. She would give half of the money to her partner to finish building their house in Romania, and she would keep half for her own expenses in Italy: clothes, food, tablets, monthly [...]

Despite the existence of a legal framework that regulates their access to social protection within the European Union, mobile citizens face numerous obstacles in accessing their social rights. Thus, while migration abroad addresses inequalities that migrants face in the country of origin, migrants are in a position of inequality compared to non-migrants when it comes to accessing social protection across borders. Based on interviews with welfare brokers and Romanian migrants in Germany, this text shows that the barriers faced by EU migrants lead to the emergence of various “welfare brokers” – companies, non-governmental organisations, informal intermediaries – who, one one [...]

Public art defines and enhances the world that we inhabit. Here we propose to use its expression in the urban and virtual environment as a mediator for our understanding of how people of various social backgrounds, skill, or disability engage with various public spaces. The article thus reflects on how wellbeing is generated in inclusive public spaces, by drawing on the experience of moving art and culture to the virtual environment. We start from the recent experience of the pandemic and draw on the example of street art – a form of culture designed with the widest public in mind. [...]

Does social inclusion mean that we can eradicate social inequality or even just reduce inequality between certain categories of people and/or groups? Or we need to refresh our thinking and chose the harder way which seems a bit Sisyphusian and instead of focusing on social exclusion and inequalities, to look for cases of social inclusion and social cohesion (in their broader sense) and try to understand it. The situation of the Roma minority might be illustrative. Historically, the Roma population was excluded and marginalized all over the world, yet, there are situations when despite the measurable unequal position in the [...]

Creating spaces of solidarity for the most vulnerable is key to ensuring that some form of social justice is achieved, in a society where socio-economic policies and social attitudes are not the most favorable towards these categories. This article looks at how social canteens and soup kitchens contribute to creating such spaces, focusing on a specific category of vulnerability, homelessness, as a case study. Homeless persons belong to a social group extremely prone to poverty, discrimination, and social exclusion, with difficult or very low access to basic needs such as housing, food, belonging, and security. The purpose of this research [...]

Why is menstruation considered to be something shameful? As a cis-woman I have experienced and seen how menstruation is depicted around me, either in whispered voices and jokes or perfectly concealed in the commercials. This question was the starting point of my research, only to find out that menstruation is a lens that reveals a range of social inequalities experienced by women. In my qualitative research, I have talked with ten women (ages 50 to 81) regarding their experiences of menstruations during the communist period in Romania in order to better understand the historical context of menstruation in Romania. In [...]

With ten children in their household, a family from Bucharest could not remember how many times they were evicted. Dorina and Ioan kept on hiding and moving because of fear of having their kids taken by the social care department. They feared the public institution that was meant to give support to people in their situation. They also had to navigate the constant pressure from Local Police which would fine them for their informal work or their living in abandoned homes. What are the challenges imposed by the politics of the daily life of the urban poor? Who are the [...]

A growing critical heritage scholarship interrogates the facets of socio-economic, cultural and even spatial exclusion involved in heritage-making and in preserving the integrity and authenticity – particularly of built heritage, historic monuments or cultural landscapes. In the case of a high-profile UNESCO site in rural Transylvania, most residents have limited (or dissonant) access to the cultural landscape they inhabit. However, this has not led to open contestation and residents have accepted to live with the official heritage enforced by a local minority – the very few remaining heirs of the Saxon settlers who built the village back in the thirteenth [...]

The article examines how women in different socio-political contexts in Romania have engaged in football and how they negotiated their path in spite of the systematic and systemic disregard of their participation. For over five decades thousands of women have practiced organized football, however their place as athletes remains marginal not only in a male dominated sport but also in the collective imagination. The Romanian Football Federation has no official records of women’s football before 2014. Current initiatives of development are many times met with reluctance from the actors involved in the world of football and the public. Based on [...]

The intersections of anthropology, inclusion, and accessibility in urban public spaces is the focus of this article, by delving into the Spaces4All project implemented in Lisbon, Portugal. It begins by emphasizing the importance of inclusion and addressing inequality in modern society, highlighting the role of anthropology in understanding, and tackling social issues. The article discusses the significance of ethnographic fieldwork in uncovering barriers faced by marginalized groups, particularly those with reduced mobility, in accessing public spaces. It outlines the methodology employed in the Spaces4All project, including fieldwork, mapping of accessible routes, and collaboration with disability support organizations. Through its process, [...]

The “Same Same – A Capacity Building and Empowerment e-mentorship Program for People with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (IDD)” is a Program with the objective to test the reliability and effectiveness of a Training and Empowerment Program for Mentors and to provide people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to lead their peers, with or without IDD. An ethnographic research and report was carried out, with a focus group created to answer and investigate these problematics and questions, a survey of the specific needs and support that individuals with IDD need to develop new skills, knowledge [...]

Ethnotheatre is a critical world-making practice that combines ethnography, social knowledge and the performing arts. As an art-based methodology, it aims to research a common ground with a group of people to adapt these observations and knowledge to an aesthetic performance as the practice of participant observation, and the anthropology toolkit methodology. In the transition to the 21st century and the disciplinary areas of theatre, education, health, and oral history, ethnotheatre begins to be thought and conceptualised as practice and methodology. As a case study, an ethnotheatre project in prison wants to understand how inmates relate to and act about [...]

The project called “Workshop on Anthropology and Photography” (WAF) is related the work done during 8 months, from March to September 2023, in a small town near Lisbon (Portugal) in a public primary and secondary school, with a particular characteristic: being a multicultural school, attended by children of many nationalities other than Portuguese, with a high number of immigrants and refugees (migrants). It uses the scientific line of Applied Anthropology (AA), not just a branch or specialization of anthropology, but the epistemological principles, methodologies, and objectives through which the anthropologist deals with his or her subject of interest, whether it’s [...]

The history of the Portuguese presence in Asia has been the subject of study of numerous analysts from various perspectives. It is well known that during just a few years Portuguese had managed to create several commercial, political, and administrative establishments. This was only possible through the displacement of people to fill in the administrative positions, but also to guarantee the safety of the establishment This paper focuses on how the rise of these posts and trading centers resulted in the birth of Creole communities, namely one residing in Tugu, in Indonesia, characterized by a unique culture embedded from a [...]

The article tackles physical activity inequalities, both socio-economical and gender, in preschool and school age children. The undisputed benefits of physical activity on physical and mental health are well documented. So why is it that most children in industrialized countries are failing to meet weekly physical activity guidelines? The answer is complex and nuanced, but may lay in the ever pervasive and entrenched issue of health inequality. Families are often presented with “simple steps” (that promote the simplicity of individual behavior) to reinforce the ease of participating in daily physical activity, such as taking public transport or walking in nature. [...]

This article is the result of ten years of work as a social interventionist with women in situations of social vulnerability, based on the premise: Which of my experiences as a social interventionist in the last ten years can contribute today to empower other individuals to also become social interventionists and develop actions aimed at women in situations of social vulnerability? The aim of this intellectual effort was, through my autoethnographic account, to construct material that could inspire others to also become social intervenors, focusing on the development of actions for marginalized women. I’ll firstly present an autoethnography as an [...]

This article examines the potential benefits of creating a virtual gallery as a response to health crises, remote areas, and the elderly population, with a focus on addressing inequality and promoting social inclusion. The study explores how virtual reality technology can effectively break down physical and geographical barriers, facilitating access to diverse artistic expressions and encouraging participation within communities. Also problematizes the significance of the virtual gallery in providing access to the arts for marginalized populations, promoting interest and curiosity in various artistic forms, and fostering community engagement. A text by Silvia Raposo llustrated by Lídia Belchior. https://theanthro.art/artbox-vr-the-gallery-reimagined-a-world-of-inclusion-beyond-the-frame/ [...]

Anthropology is the discipline of counterintuition. It seeks to find the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the incomprehensible. When finished, the process starts again, this time in reverse. In the hope that a synthesis will manifest itself. In this article we propose to look at participatory art, changing the turns. What kind of art is this, the ‘non-participatory’? What does dissent flee from? For this purpose, we will use our work in participatory art projects in the last two years (Wame l Anthropology Public) as fieldwork. In a contemporary era during colonial deconstruction, grappling with identity movements, [...]