Giorgio Brocco
Since October 2021, I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. In September 2021, I defended my Ph.D. thesis at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin.
My doctoral research, entitled "Trajectories of Albinism Subjectivities, Experiences, and Narratives in Tanzania", has documented the life experiences and socio-economic conditions of people with albinism living in the East African country. The focus of my analysis has concerned not only the daily living experiences of persons with albinism but the multiple ways in which my research participants related to each other in their everyday experiences, talked about and imagined their bodily condition and forged various networks of relatedness and care. Furthermore, my research has also shed light on how people with albinism critically participated in the media discussions and activist endeavours carried out by humanitarian/human rights actors in relation to the wave of violence against them as well as the health issues associated with the condition.
By analyzing biomedical and environmental measures, political and economic debates, public health policy reports, and everyday practices of human and more-than-human subjects, my new postdoctoral project grapples with the multiple ways humans conceive, interact with, and imagine the lasting presence of artificial chemical molecules in the two French overseas territories and Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Address: University of Vienna
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
NIG, 4th floor
Universitätsstraße 7
1010 Vienna
My doctoral research, entitled "Trajectories of Albinism Subjectivities, Experiences, and Narratives in Tanzania", has documented the life experiences and socio-economic conditions of people with albinism living in the East African country. The focus of my analysis has concerned not only the daily living experiences of persons with albinism but the multiple ways in which my research participants related to each other in their everyday experiences, talked about and imagined their bodily condition and forged various networks of relatedness and care. Furthermore, my research has also shed light on how people with albinism critically participated in the media discussions and activist endeavours carried out by humanitarian/human rights actors in relation to the wave of violence against them as well as the health issues associated with the condition.
By analyzing biomedical and environmental measures, political and economic debates, public health policy reports, and everyday practices of human and more-than-human subjects, my new postdoctoral project grapples with the multiple ways humans conceive, interact with, and imagine the lasting presence of artificial chemical molecules in the two French overseas territories and Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Address: University of Vienna
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
NIG, 4th floor
Universitätsstraße 7
1010 Vienna
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of influential works by renowned scholars and intellectuals in the humanities and social sciences. Pioneering
voices such as Franz Fanon, Valentin-Yves Mudimbe, and Edward Said, along with scholars like Gayatri Spivak
and advocates of Black feminism such as Sylvia Wynter and Françoise Vergès, have contributed to shaping this
realm. Medical anthropology, critical medical anthropology and other related disciplines within the broad field
of “medical/health humanities” have actively engaged with these critical theoretical impulses, refining epistemological
and methodological approaches that align with post- and decolonial analyses. This article explores the
intersections of post- and decolonial perspectives with current anthropological agenda, drawing attention to the
manifold research avenues that have emerged from such entanglements. Specifically, the paper delves into three
key research areas: (1) the examination of the influence of ideas about post- and decolonial subjectivities in connection
to changing notions of health, disease, and disability; (2) the critical analysis of humanitarian and global
health interventions; and (3) the exploration of indigenous systems of care and healing practices from the Global
South. While acknowledging the fragmented, partial, situated and selective nature of the selection of scholarly
sources for this discussion, the article aims to shed light on the dynamic interplays between post- and decolonial
theories and the multifold and complex medical anthropology landscapes.
Power edited by Tristan Loloum, Simone Abram, and Natalie Ortar, as well as
the “duograph” (two single-authored books with joint preface and conclusion
and based on 16 months of fieldwork), Wind and Power in the Anthropocene,
composed by Ecologics by Cymene Howe and Energopolitics by Dominic
Boyer, succeed in adding new information to existing ethnographic data and theorizing about these topics. The three books mark the arrival of an
anthropological attention to the political frictions and social inequalities
involved in the (human) neoliberal extraction of new forms of non-carbon
renewable energy resources (e.g., wind, water, wood and so on) and the
conflicts within political processes of energy transition—from nuclear power
and hydrocarbons to renewable energy sources. Additionally, these texts
explore the political, social and economic practices around ecological pressing
issues and more-than-human subjects within sites of energy extraction. The
authors of these essays not only pay close attention to the pollution, violence
and inequalities due to the forced exploitation of non-carbon energy sources,
but also to the political design and unsustainability related to the utilization of
such novel types of energy within the neoliberal extractive economy.
the circulation of the works of various intellectuals within the humanities and social sciences.
These include the writings of Franz Fanon, Valentin-Yves Mudimbe and Edward
Said. Research conducted by other scholars, some part of Subaltern Studies, such as
Gayatri Spivak, and others belonging to the sphere of Black feminism, such as Sylvia
Wynter and Françoise Vergès, fall within this strand of study. Out of these influences,
medical anthropology and other cognate disciplines within the so-called “medical humanities”
have produced, developed and refined various epistemological and methodological
approaches that, not only can be defined as ‘critical’, but must be framed
within the theoretical impulses inaugurated by post- and decolonial analyses. After introducing
some of the guiding lines of this strand of ideas and knowledge, as they have
been absorbed by current anthropological and sociological deliberations, this article
identifies—incompletely and selectively—some of the multiple research avenues that
have arisen at the intersection of post- and decolonial approaches and the reflections
circulating within medical anthropology. More specifically, the three lines of research
examined here regard: (1) the analysis of post- and decolonial subjectivities in relation
to changing conceptions of health, disease, and disability; (2) the critical study of humanitarian
and global health interventions; and (3) the examination of indigenous and
non-Western systems of care and healing practices.
bodily impairments and disability identities are defined,
socially constructed and enacted in various musical practices.
The majority of these analyses are from the Global North and
do not examine the various entanglements of music and disability
in other socio-economic, political and geographical
contexts. This article therefore explores the intertwinement of
notions of disability identity related to albinism and the enactment
of social performativity, visibility and masculinity of the
condition in musical productions. This scrutiny is based on
both the song lyrics of two renowned artists with albinism,
Salif Keita from Mali and Yellowman from Jamaica, and an
ethnographic investigation of a Tanzanian musician, Ras Six.
https://polarjournal.org/2022/04/02/review-essay-multiple-energy-landscapes/
recurring media and humanitarian narratives. Based on data collected over 19 months of fieldwork in Tanzania, the present article explores how discourses and ideas about albinism have circulated among and been reformulated by people with albinism to deconstruct shared conceptions of normalcy and affirm their agency in the Tanzanian
public arena. The ethnographic material shows in which multiple ways the intertwinement of global actions and everyday practices related to albinism have strengthened already-existing political subjectivities, (re)shaped political claims, and articulated ideas of (dis)belonging.