Tilmann HEIL, social scientist
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Cfp: Panel "Latin America under the Conviviality-Inequality lens" - Deadline 30 November 2021

24/9/2021

 
I am glad to organize this interdisciplinary panel with Clara Ruvituso, Ramiro Segura and Astrid Ulloa from Mecila! Consider submitting your work:

Interdisciplinary Panel
07.09 Latin America under the Conviviality-Inequality lens: Current scenarios and possible futures of living together at the

Congreso Internacional del Consejo Europeo de Investigaciones Sociales de América Latina (CEISAL)
13-15 June 2022 in Helskinki, Finland

ABSTRACT
This panel invites contributions that discuss the current scenarios and possible futures in Latin America under the lens of Conviviality-Inequality. In the last years, Conviviality-Inequality studies developed a focus on Latin America, initiating productive dialogue with Latin American social thought, otherwise often displaced to the margins of global knowledge circulation, where it dwells together with postcolonial studies, the critiques of anthropocentrism, and further critical theories of the other "souths" and "norths". The panel aims to go beyond established conceptions of coloniality and modernity, globality and locality, or parallel notions that present all too simple binaries, juxtapositions, and closures.
Multiple and intersecting social, political, and material regimes have shaped Latin American territorialities. They have emerged from the confluence and entanglement of colonial and imperialist, as well as modern and developmentalist globalizing forces and their contestations. These regimes shape time-spaces of different scales, from the global to the local, from the event to long durée. The paired concept Conviviality-Inequality captures the co-existence of ever-changing configurations of these multiple processes and their spatializations. While conviviality theoretically encompasses the spectrum from conflict to peace, its conceptual marriage to inequality hones in on the hierarchical, unequal historical condition, in Latin America and beyond. Current debates of zumbification, aquilombar, buen vivir, and ways of rethinking creolization, mestizaje, négritude, imperialism, and ancestral knowledge explore the convivial configurations of the Latin American pasts, presents, and futures. They take the interdependent inequalities and differences into account (among others, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, citizenship, human/more-than-human) as
well as the countless forms of resistance and contestation that have arisen in the region. Attention to such configurations brings onto-epistemological openings to the forefront: spatialities, temporalities, colonialities, and modernities are all constituted in the plural.
Within the rapidly changing global scenario of both global social movements, such as “Vidas negras importam”, “Estallido social”, “Fridays for Future”, and the Covid-19 pandemic, Conviviality-Inequality opens a novel and productive opportunity for analysis given its focus on specific tensions at local and global levels, between inequality and differences, and their contestations. Papers should empirically explore concrete examples of Conviviality-Inequality, making use of the full spectrum of onto-epistemological, material, and symbolic plurality. Beyond the debates addressed so far, some such examples: the re-emergence of State power from urban centers to national borders, from the intimate community to the geopolitical scale; the salience of less-regarded categories of difference, such as age, dis/ability, or legal status in interaction that unfold in the configuration of race, class, and gender; the reconfiguring and diverse contestations in relation to the body, nature, or the non-human; the tensions, inequalities, and opportunities of the digital transformation and social media in knowledge circulation. Based on empirical reflections of the current conjuncture, we would like to discuss what kinds of convivial scenarios and futures become possible and conceivable in Latin America when the pluralities, synergies, tensions, interconnections, and contradictions are fully explored to address both continuities and change.

Practical Information
  • Submissions via: https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/ceisal-2022/call-for-papers-open-from-sept-15-to-nov-30-2021
  • Deadline 30 November 2021
  • Abstract Length 300 words

Continuously shaping horizontal global collaboration

3/8/2020

 
It is a pleasure to announce that over the coming years I will be able to work together with the colleagues from the Maria Sibylla Merian International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America - Mecila - to inquire into the entanglements of inequality and conviviality in Latin American societies.

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The Centre is a collaboration between seven research institutions in four countries and two continents
  • Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales Research (Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences, IdIHCS)
  • El Colegio de México (The College of Mexico, COLMEX)
  • Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (Brazilian Centre of Analysis and Planning, CEBRAP)
  • Universidade de São Paulo (University of São Paulo, USP)
  • Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Ibero-American Institute, IAI)
  • Freie Universität Berlin (Free University Berlin, FU Berlin), and
  • Universität zu Köln (University of Cologne, UzK)
The last will be my academic home from where I will work with colleagues on the [hi]stories in which forms of living together with difference are entangled diachronically. It allows me to draw my expertise from my previous projects in Senegal, Spain, and Brazil together.

APRESENTAÇÃO E DEBATE DO LIVRO EM LANÇAMENTO

6/3/2020

 
Três debates do meu livro em lançamento

I: Museu Nacional, Horto Botânico, Quinta da Boa Vista, s/n - São Cristóvão, Rio de Janeiro
12 de março 2020, 9:30 horas
com os debatedores
Joana Bahia, Professora titular, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
El Hadji Diallo, Jornalista e tradutor independente
Charles P. Gomes, Pesquisador, Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa
 
II: Núcleo interdisciplinar de Estudos Migratórios, IPPUR, UFRJ, Rua da Lapa 120 / 204
13 de março 2020, 17:00 horas
com a debatedora
Miriam de Oliveira Santos, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro

III. Centro de Estudos Africanos, Universidade de São Paulo, USP
Sala 08, Avenida Luciano Gualberto 315
16 de março 2020, 15:00 horas
com os debatedores
Alexander Yao Cobbinah, USP
Luciane Scarato, Universidade de Colônia e Mecila/Cebrap


Sumário do livro
Em um mundo onde a diferença é muitas vezes vista como uma ameaça ou desafio, o livro explora como as pessoas realmente vivem em sociedades diversas. Baseado numa etnografia a longo prazo de africanos ocidentais, tanto no Senegal como na Espanha, este livro propõe que a convivialidade é um compromisso com a diferença entre etnias, línguas, religiões e práticas.

Tilmann Heil reúne histórias de longa data, projetos políticos e práticas cotidianas de viver com a diferença. Com foco na vida de bairros em Casamança, Senegal e Catalunha, Espanha - duas regiões igualmente complexas - o livro mostra como os senegaleses negociam e traduzem com habilidade os meandros da diferença e do poder. Nestes mundos africanos e europeus vividos, a convivialidade é sempre temporária e em transformação.

Este livro oferece uma leitura texturizada, realista, porém esperançosa, da diferença, da mudança social, do poder e do respeito.

Deromanticising integration. On the importance of convivial disintegration

19/12/2019

 
in Migration Studies [Open Access]
with Fran Meissner

Abstract
In light of current experiences with migration-driven diversification, is it still conducive to think about the effects of international migration by advocating for immigrant integration? This article argues that there are key problems with European uses of immigrant integration logics that cannot be resolved through redefinitions or reappropriations of the term. Even highly refined notions of immigrant integration misconstrue the role and relevance of differences in diversity dynamics. Immigrant integration further risks concealing and perpetuating power dynamics and (colonial) hierarchies. These continue to shape the social relevance of differences. Analytically thinking about superdiversity directs us to paying more attention to disintegration, a notion that cannot be reduced and measured by way of individual or group performance. To be able to usefully engage with disintegration, we argue that it needs to be divorced from ideas about social fragmentation and social collapse. To do this, we draw on recent developments in the literature on conviviality to emphasise the relational practices, power asymmetries, and materialities that enter into negotiations of difference. Convivial disintegration aptly addresses continuously reconfiguring and uncertain social environments. Our article thus provides a deromanticised and enabling provocation for easing integration anxieties.

Conviviality as diasporic knowledge

11/12/2019

 
in African Diaspora 11 (1-2): 53-70

Abstract
​Based on my time with im/mobile West Africans in Senegal and Spain since 2007, I propose conviviality to conceptualise the complexity of my interlocutors’ local and diasporic tactics and views of living with difference. Simple everyday encounters such as greeting and dwelling in urban spaces serve to disentangle their various levels of reflection, habitual expectations and tactical action. They had local to global reference frameworks at their disposal. Not pretending to represent their knowledge, I discuss the inspirations I received from trying to understand what they shared with me non/verbally regarding living with difference. To start from this decentred set of premises challenges established Western/Northern politics of living with difference. Through conviviality, I show a distinct way of engaging multiple and overlapping ways of differentiating and homogenising practices and raise awareness for the importance and feasibility of minimal socialities in diasporic configurations, transnational migrations and the respective local urban contexts.

link

Comparing Conviviality - in print

15/11/2019

 
Picture
In the evening, neighbours of different ethnic and religious affiliations celebrate a baptism on a public street in Lindiane, Ziguinchor in 2009.
In a world where difference is often seen as a threat or challenge, Comparing Conviviality explores how people actually live in diverse societies. Based on a long-term ethnography of West Africans in both Senegal and Spain, the book proposes that conviviality is a commitment to difference, across ethnicities, languages, religions, and practices.
Heil brings together longstanding histories, political projects, and everyday practices of living with difference. With a focus on neighbourhood life in Casamance, Senegal, and Catalonia, Spain - two equally complex regions - Comparing Conviviality depicts how Senegalese people skillfully negotiate and translate the intricacies of difference and power. In these lived African and European worlds, conviviality is ever temporary and changing. 
This book offers a textured, realist, yet hopeful understanding of difference, social change, power, and respect. It will be invaluable to students and scholars of African, migration, and diversity studies across anthropology, sociology, geography, political sciences, and law.
Reference
Heil, Tilmann 2020. Comparing conviviality. Living with difference in Casamance and Catalonia. Global diversities. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ISBN 978-3-030-34716-1

Problematizing Morality

20/2/2019

 

Consider to apply to discuss and problematize conviviality and morality together at University of Tuebingen. Details below.

Ethnographic Approaches to the Normative Dimensions of Everyday Life
September 24 - 27, 2019 – Tübingen, Germany

 
In recent years, the social sciences have both undergone and propelled a “moral turn”, synchronized to an advancing moralization of public and political discourse and practice. Two main lines of argument infuse this turn: The location of morality and its relation to power. Morality should neither be conceived of as individual predispositions nor as discrete spheres of sociality. Instead, everyday life can be comprehend as imbued with moral valuation and reasoning: The social is ultimately the arena of the ethical. Considering the broad interest in researching morality and the normative dimensions of everyday life, this Summer School aims to provide a platform for early career researchers to contribute to these debates, facilitating international and interdisciplinary dialogue, and highlighting the dimension of morality as objects of study. By emphasizing the articulation of the moral to power and by refining conceptual differentiations (such as the inherent relation between morality and religion), the Summer School aims to sound out and deepen the understanding of the moral dimensions of social life by analyzing their “problematization”. In such problematizations morality comes into being as an object of reflection that can be contested and claimed. At their heart lies the nexus between morality and emotions. Morals are part of and informed by “emotional ideologies” resulting in perceptions which differ significantly and are prone for conflict.
 
We want to open a space for inquiring into the processes in which moral and ethical claims acquire normative power and how this normativity is contested; the ways actors practice and relate to these claims; how they navigate through moral conflicts; and finally how they envision, strive for and live a life that matters, conceived of as ‘good’ and ‘right’.
To this end, we welcome applications from ethnographers working on questions of morality from different disciplines and at different career stages (PhD students, postdocs and early-career scholars). Combining lectures, workshops, and master classes conducted by renowned scholars in the field, the Summer School offers profound theoretical input and different formats for exchange. These include the presentation of participants’ research, theoretical discussion, and time for reflecting methodological matters and research ethics.

More details see pdf file.
Call for Applicants
File Size: 231 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

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  • Overview
  • Research
    • Urban wood/s
    • Portarias
    • Urban alliances >
      • Narratives of Urban Conviviality-Inequality
    • Valued Difference >
      • The Setting
      • Comparison
      • Space of multiplicity
      • Status changes
    • Comparing Conviviality >
      • Key messages
      • Related publications
  • Publications
  • about
    • Events
    • Contact
  • News