An Anthropology of Crosslocations introduces a radical new approach to understanding location. The co-authors show that the question of where something is depends on how places are mutually connected and disconnected. The location of a place can be established by different logics, such as national borders, ecosystems, or economic zones. These different ways of classifying the relative value and significance of a place coexist and overlap: for example, national borders are regularly crosscut by ecosystems. By thinking of 'location' as a process defined by several different coexisting locating regimes, the book showcases a fresh way to think about the multiple and overlapping connections and disconnections between here and elsewhere. This approach can fundamentally revise ethnographic and anthropological views on the importance, value and significance of where people, things and animals are located and, as such, redefines the idea of 'the field.'
The volume brings together seven anthropologists who have worked together for six years. The chapters take the reader through a series of journeys around the Mediterranean region-to North Africa, the East Mediterranean, and Southern Europe. Each chapter unfolds an ethnographic or historical account of the coexistence of different values and meanings of location in different places.
About the Authors:
Sarah Green is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki. She specialises on concepts of borders, space, place and location. The initial idea of crosslocations developed from her research on the Greek-Albanian border, in southern Greece (Argolid region) and in the Aegean region, all of which built on her earlier research in London on feminist separatist location in the city, and in Manchester on the spatial and gender implications of the introduction of the internet to the city.
Samuli Lähteenaho is a doctoral candidate in social and cultural anthropology at the University of Helsinki and a researcher at the Finnish Institute in the Middle East. His doctoral research examines relative location and politics of environment and space on the Lebanese coastline.
Phaedra Douzina-Bakalaki is currently working on a postdoctoral research project funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
