J P Baldacchino
Biographic Data
| ID | 38446 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J P Baldacchino |
| GIVEN NAMES | J P |
| FAMILY NAME | Baldacchino |
| SIGNATURE | BALDACCHINO J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Malta |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7673-5001 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Using Qualitative Research in Community Engagement to Capture and Mitigate Vulnerability Mechanisms in the Face of Infectious Diseases
Various frameworks have been proposed for carrying out community engagement (CE) in the context of infectious disease response, but few have done so through a lens of vulnerability and even fewer, if any, have compared cases across countries. This paper reflects on the implementation of a project based on social science research and CE to capture and mitigate vulnerability mechanisms, which was carried out in France, Germany, Italy, Malta, and Sl…
Analytic approaches to the anthropology of the good
Building on the anthropology of the good, this article seeks to apply a taxonomical approach inspired by analytical philosophy to the study of moral incoherence. The topic of moral incoherence is a growing concern in clinical contexts. Drawing on fieldwork and clinical data during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malta, this article brings together approaches from anthropology, psychiatry and psychology to look at the way in which such 'moral breakdown' …
Questions of conscience in a confessional state
While there is an ample body of literature in the anthropology of moralities there is a surprising dearth of research on conscience per se. In Malta over the last ten years there has been a proliferation of a public discourse of ‘conscience’ - its affordances, freedoms and its legal safeguards. This has been the result of debates over reforms leading to the liberalization of sexual and family life, including most recently debates over the legaliz…
Between Fantasy and Realism
English-language studies of Korean drama (Korean TV serials) have tended to focus on the transnational consumption of drama in the context of the ‘Korean Wave’ ( Hallyu ). Analysing the classification and reception of Korean drama and its interaction with Korean audiences, this paper argues that there has been a significant shift both in the dramas produced and in the audience expectations and interactions with these texts. Building on twenty-one…
Is There No Honour among the Maltese
The ‘honour-shame syndrome’ is an anthropological model originally developed in the sixties to describe Mediterranean cultural unity. The model came under heavy criticism, producing a veritable ‘anti-Mediterraneanist’ backlash. There is, however, a renewed interest in the regional paradigm. This article attempts an analysis of concepts of ‘honour’ in Malta, contextualising it within the broader ethnographic and linguistic evidence from the region…
The anthropologist's last bow
The religious beliefs and experiences of others have long been grist to the anthropological mill. In much anthropological scholarship however there is a resolute silence on the anthropologists' own relationship to the domain of the 'spirit'. Recent scholarship in the anthropology of religion has been highly critical of the Christian underpinnings of much of what is ostensibly secular anthropology (as in the works of Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas …
Anthropology as critique
Joel S. Kahn (1946-2017), was one of the founding editors of Critique of Anthropology. Throughout his career Joel continually adhered to an anthropology founded on the praxis of critique. Through his fieldwork in South East Asia and his own incursions into Western modernity and modernist thought, Joel was committed to a form of anthropology that challenged strict disciplinary conventions. The papers in this special issue written by his colleagues…
Renato Carosone and Neapolitan Music
Hybridity has been a favored metaphor used to discuss cultural mixture in the Mediterranean and beyond. The mobility, interconnectivity, and exchange that characterize Mediterranean historiography lend themselves to the depiction of a cultural landscape of hybridity and mixture. The discourse of hybridity, however, has often been analytically “fuzzy,” with scholars sliding effortlessly from discussing instances of “aesthetic hybridity” to quasi-c…
Moral geometry, natural alignments and utopian urban form
The city has featured as a central image in utopian thought. In planning the foundation of the new and ideal city there is a close interconnection between ideas about urban form and the vision of the moral good. The spatial structure of the ideal city in these visions is a framing device that embodies and articulates not only political philosophy but is itself an articulation of moral and cosmological systems. This paper analyses three different …
In Sickness and in Love? Autumn in My Heart and the Embodiment of Morality in Korean Television Drama
The modern ideology of romantic love is a prominent theme in Korean television dra- mas (K-dramas). In this paper, I focus on one particular drama, Autumn in My Heart (2000), and the real life love stories of young Korean women. By examining the moral discourses of love within the drama in conjunction with the personal experiences of my informants (echoing the ways my own informants spoke of their love stories in the con- text of the dramas), I a…
Contextualizing the secular public sphere
This article analyses the Catholic religious ritual of the festa among the Maltese community in Melbourne and compares it with the scope and function of the ritual in Malta. The author argues that such a comparative analysis can serve as a useful lens through which to analyse some of the challenges posed by the secularist public sphere envisioned in the liberal multicultural state in Australia
Markets of piety and pious markets
The author takes a historical and ethnographic approach to the rise of Korean Protestantism and its relationship to Korean modernization and capitalist development. He argues that while theories of Asian capitalism have looked at the ways a Confucian work ethic has helped the development of Asian capitalist economies, this perspective ignores the overarching concern with regional identity. This approach has also tended to ignore the diversity of …
Eidos and affect
My critics point out that I introduce unnecessary conceptual distinctions while failing \nto draw ones that matter. Both Hook and Sullivan, for example, point out that my \narticle does not differentiate between affect and emotion. Hook also notes that I do not \ndifferentiate between the Lacanian registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real \nwhen discussing identification. He also notes that a number of distinctions I draw are \nspurio…
Miracles in the waiting room of modernity
This study will focus on the persistence of ‘pre‐modern’ forms of religious belief in a secular age. By examining in detail the process of canonisation of St. George Preca, the first Maltese saint, this study will explore concepts of the self and relations to the body in a Catholic modernity. The focus on miracles and canonisation in a context other than that of a North Atlantic modernity also allows me to highlight the need to understand the com…
Believing in a secular age
Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age generated a great deal of attention—and has stimulated important debates—among a diverse range of scholars in sociology, history, politics, religious studies and to a lesser extent, anthropologists. Much of the debate has focused on the implications of Taylor’s work for the so‐called secularisation thesis and the place (or non‐place) of religion in the so‐called public sphere. The essays in this volume arise less ou…
The eidetic of belonging
In this article I discuss the way affect has featured in discussions of identity, focusing on ethnic and national identities. While affect features in most discussions of ethnicity it has mostly been dismissed as a testament to the irrationality and dangerous qualities of the identity in question. Such discussions adopt a simplistic model of human psychology, usually based on a hydraulic model of the emotions. After considering some recent and pi…
The Evil Eye ( għajn ) in Malta
In this paper, I construct a plea for superstition and examine the ways in which contemporary scholars use the term to denote irrational belief. ‘Superstition’ has, throughout history, been used as a derogatory term denoting inferior and dangerous beliefs. Examining the process whereby people continue to believe that which they deem irrational, I adopt a reflexive and phenomenological approach. Focussing on the evil eye ( għajn ) in Malta and the…
Eros and Modernity
Modern and Loving (in) it. In a recent article sociologist Hahm2 charts the transition to current attitudes to marriage in Korea. Love is essential, marriage is optional! Employment is necessary, marriage is a choice! These slogans clearly show the values of today’s younger generation. Until recently, people married ‘‘as a traditional custom’’. Nowadays, more people give reasons like ‘‘to gain independence from my parents’’, ‘‘to gain psychologic…
The anthropologist's last bow
The religious beliefs and experiences of others have long been grist to the anthropological mill. In much anthropological scholarship however there is a resolute silence on the anthropologists' own relationship to the domain of the 'spirit'. Recent scholarship in the anthropology of religion has been highly critical of the Christian underpinnings of much of what is ostensibly secular anthropology (as in the works of Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas …
Eros and Modernity
Modern and Loving (in) it. In a recent article sociologist Hahm2 charts the transition to current attitudes to marriage in Korea. Love is essential, marriage is optional! Employment is necessary, marriage is a choice! These slogans clearly show the values of today’s younger generation. Until recently, people married ‘‘as a traditional custom’’. Nowadays, more people give reasons like ‘‘to gain independence from my parents’’, ‘‘to gain psychologic…
Miracles in the waiting room of modernity
This study will focus on the persistence of ‘pre‐modern’ forms of religious belief in a secular age. By examining in detail the process of canonisation of St. George Preca, the first Maltese saint, this study will explore concepts of the self and relations to the body in a Catholic modernity. The focus on miracles and canonisation in a context other than that of a North Atlantic modernity also allows me to highlight the need to understand the com…
Contextualizing the secular public sphere
This article analyses the Catholic religious ritual of the festa among the Maltese community in Melbourne and compares it with the scope and function of the ritual in Malta. The author argues that such a comparative analysis can serve as a useful lens through which to analyse some of the challenges posed by the secularist public sphere envisioned in the liberal multicultural state in Australia
Believing in a secular age
Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age generated a great deal of attention—and has stimulated important debates—among a diverse range of scholars in sociology, history, politics, religious studies and to a lesser extent, anthropologists. Much of the debate has focused on the implications of Taylor’s work for the so‐called secularisation thesis and the place (or non‐place) of religion in the so‐called public sphere. The essays in this volume arise less ou…
The eidetic of belonging
In this article I discuss the way affect has featured in discussions of identity, focusing on ethnic and national identities. While affect features in most discussions of ethnicity it has mostly been dismissed as a testament to the irrationality and dangerous qualities of the identity in question. Such discussions adopt a simplistic model of human psychology, usually based on a hydraulic model of the emotions. After considering some recent and pi…
Eros and Modernity
Modern and Loving (in) it. In a recent article sociologist Hahm2 charts the transition to current attitudes to marriage in Korea. Love is essential, marriage is optional! Employment is necessary, marriage is a choice! These slogans clearly show the values of today’s younger generation. Until recently, people married ‘‘as a traditional custom’’. Nowadays, more people give reasons like ‘‘to gain independence from my parents’’, ‘‘to gain psychologic…
The Evil Eye ( għajn ) in Malta
In this paper, I construct a plea for superstition and examine the ways in which contemporary scholars use the term to denote irrational belief. ‘Superstition’ has, throughout history, been used as a derogatory term denoting inferior and dangerous beliefs. Examining the process whereby people continue to believe that which they deem irrational, I adopt a reflexive and phenomenological approach. Focussing on the evil eye ( għajn ) in Malta and the…
Eidos and affect
My critics point out that I introduce unnecessary conceptual distinctions while failing \nto draw ones that matter. Both Hook and Sullivan, for example, point out that my \narticle does not differentiate between affect and emotion. Hook also notes that I do not \ndifferentiate between the Lacanian registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real \nwhen discussing identification. He also notes that a number of distinctions I draw are \nspurio…
Miracles in the waiting room of modernity
This study will focus on the persistence of ‘pre‐modern’ forms of religious belief in a secular age. By examining in detail the process of canonisation of St. George Preca, the first Maltese saint, this study will explore concepts of the self and relations to the body in a Catholic modernity. The focus on miracles and canonisation in a context other than that of a North Atlantic modernity also allows me to highlight the need to understand the com…
Believing in a secular age
Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age generated a great deal of attention—and has stimulated important debates—among a diverse range of scholars in sociology, history, politics, religious studies and to a lesser extent, anthropologists. Much of the debate has focused on the implications of Taylor’s work for the so‐called secularisation thesis and the place (or non‐place) of religion in the so‐called public sphere. The essays in this volume arise less ou…
The eidetic of belonging
In this article I discuss the way affect has featured in discussions of identity, focusing on ethnic and national identities. While affect features in most discussions of ethnicity it has mostly been dismissed as a testament to the irrationality and dangerous qualities of the identity in question. Such discussions adopt a simplistic model of human psychology, usually based on a hydraulic model of the emotions. After considering some recent and pi…
Markets of piety and pious markets
The author takes a historical and ethnographic approach to the rise of Korean Protestantism and its relationship to Korean modernization and capitalist development. He argues that while theories of Asian capitalism have looked at the ways a Confucian work ethic has helped the development of Asian capitalist economies, this perspective ignores the overarching concern with regional identity. This approach has also tended to ignore the diversity of …
In Sickness and in Love? Autumn in My Heart and the Embodiment of Morality in Korean Television Drama
The modern ideology of romantic love is a prominent theme in Korean television dra- mas (K-dramas). In this paper, I focus on one particular drama, Autumn in My Heart (2000), and the real life love stories of young Korean women. By examining the moral discourses of love within the drama in conjunction with the personal experiences of my informants (echoing the ways my own informants spoke of their love stories in the con- text of the dramas), I a…
Contextualizing the secular public sphere
This article analyses the Catholic religious ritual of the festa among the Maltese community in Melbourne and compares it with the scope and function of the ritual in Malta. The author argues that such a comparative analysis can serve as a useful lens through which to analyse some of the challenges posed by the secularist public sphere envisioned in the liberal multicultural state in Australia
Renato Carosone and Neapolitan Music
Hybridity has been a favored metaphor used to discuss cultural mixture in the Mediterranean and beyond. The mobility, interconnectivity, and exchange that characterize Mediterranean historiography lend themselves to the depiction of a cultural landscape of hybridity and mixture. The discourse of hybridity, however, has often been analytically “fuzzy,” with scholars sliding effortlessly from discussing instances of “aesthetic hybridity” to quasi-c…
Moral geometry, natural alignments and utopian urban form
The city has featured as a central image in utopian thought. In planning the foundation of the new and ideal city there is a close interconnection between ideas about urban form and the vision of the moral good. The spatial structure of the ideal city in these visions is a framing device that embodies and articulates not only political philosophy but is itself an articulation of moral and cosmological systems. This paper analyses three different …
Is There No Honour among the Maltese
The ‘honour-shame syndrome’ is an anthropological model originally developed in the sixties to describe Mediterranean cultural unity. The model came under heavy criticism, producing a veritable ‘anti-Mediterraneanist’ backlash. There is, however, a renewed interest in the regional paradigm. This article attempts an analysis of concepts of ‘honour’ in Malta, contextualising it within the broader ethnographic and linguistic evidence from the region…
The anthropologist's last bow
The religious beliefs and experiences of others have long been grist to the anthropological mill. In much anthropological scholarship however there is a resolute silence on the anthropologists' own relationship to the domain of the 'spirit'. Recent scholarship in the anthropology of religion has been highly critical of the Christian underpinnings of much of what is ostensibly secular anthropology (as in the works of Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas …
Anthropology as critique
Joel S. Kahn (1946-2017), was one of the founding editors of Critique of Anthropology. Throughout his career Joel continually adhered to an anthropology founded on the praxis of critique. Through his fieldwork in South East Asia and his own incursions into Western modernity and modernist thought, Joel was committed to a form of anthropology that challenged strict disciplinary conventions. The papers in this special issue written by his colleagues…
Between Fantasy and Realism
English-language studies of Korean drama (Korean TV serials) have tended to focus on the transnational consumption of drama in the context of the ‘Korean Wave’ ( Hallyu ). Analysing the classification and reception of Korean drama and its interaction with Korean audiences, this paper argues that there has been a significant shift both in the dramas produced and in the audience expectations and interactions with these texts. Building on twenty-one…
Questions of conscience in a confessional state
While there is an ample body of literature in the anthropology of moralities there is a surprising dearth of research on conscience per se. In Malta over the last ten years there has been a proliferation of a public discourse of ‘conscience’ - its affordances, freedoms and its legal safeguards. This has been the result of debates over reforms leading to the liberalization of sexual and family life, including most recently debates over the legaliz…
Using Qualitative Research in Community Engagement to Capture and Mitigate Vulnerability Mechanisms in the Face of Infectious Diseases
Various frameworks have been proposed for carrying out community engagement (CE) in the context of infectious disease response, but few have done so through a lens of vulnerability and even fewer, if any, have compared cases across countries. This paper reflects on the implementation of a project based on social science research and CE to capture and mitigate vulnerability mechanisms, which was carried out in France, Germany, Italy, Malta, and Sl…
Analytic approaches to the anthropology of the good
Building on the anthropology of the good, this article seeks to apply a taxonomical approach inspired by analytical philosophy to the study of moral incoherence. The topic of moral incoherence is a growing concern in clinical contexts. Drawing on fieldwork and clinical data during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malta, this article brings together approaches from anthropology, psychiatry and psychology to look at the way in which such 'moral breakdown' …
Sociology (17 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · History (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works)