R Sansi
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 18382 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | R Sansi |
| NOMBRES | R |
| APELLIDO | Sansi |
| FIRMA | SANSI R |
| AFILIACIONES | Universitat de Barcelona |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7084-9243 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 58 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 119 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 58 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2005 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
The future of the past
Commentary
The gift is, first, an event. Social theories of the gift have often attempted to reduce the gift to a social institution: exchange, reciprocity. But then the gift becomes simply a delayed and misrecognised form of social exchange, to use Pierre Bourdieu's own terminology (1977). How can we think about the gift as a concept before its reduction to reciprocity? For Jacques Derrida, a gift cannot be reciprocated because a return always implies its …
Infrastructures débordées. Gouvernance et mobilités quotidiennes dans les villes africaines
Fields And Labs
In 2008 I attended a workshop at Can Xalant. This [art production] center was in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of Mataró, a town in the periphery of Barcelona; it wasn&s;t exactly around the corner. But the place was packed when I arrived. The name of the workshop was “The Transparent Factory,” and its aim was to discuss the meanings of “production” in contemporary art. Most of the speakers, artists, critics, curators, between their late twen…
Antropologias, artes e políticas
No presente artigo, o nosso objetivo foi produzir sob um olhar antropológico um estado da arte relativo a práticas artísticas de compromisso político introduzindo interlocuções com pesquisas que discutissem várias relações estabelecidas entre os fenômenos, experiências, práticas e conceitos acerca de gestos artísticos de fundo político, tendo como eixos as transformações ocorridas recentemente. Entendemos a relação entre arte, política e antropol…
Chapter 4 From Weapons of Crime to Jewels of the Crown
Art
The definition of ‘art’ is extremely complicated. Its meaning has shifted radically, in particular in the last century. Originally, in Latin, it meant ‘craft’, but then for the last few centuries, the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or poetry) were defined in contraposition to craft. In the last century, the rejection of conventional artistic standards has resulted in the paradoxical definition of contemporary art as ‘anti-art’. These cha…
Walking utopias. The politics of walking in art and anthropology
Walking has become a common form of practice in contemporary art. Recent anthropology has been influenced by art walking practices. In this paper, however, I show significant differences between art walking and what we could call ‘Walking anthropology’. The former is more explicitly engaged, in many cases, in the ‘politics of walking’. These politics, on the one hand, could be based on ideas of walking as an everyday prefiguration of a future uto…
Powerful Things
Practically everyone is a collector today. This affirmation appears in the foreword of Powerful Things, the book by German anthropologist Karl-Heinz Kohl, recently translated to English. For the au
The Trans-Anthropological, Anachronism, and the Contemporary
From crime to art. Contradictions in the cultural transformation of Afro-Brazilian Candomblé
The Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé radically changed in the twentieth century. From being persecuted as crime and sorcery, it has become identified as culture. Its objects and images have become works of art. This article presents this process of ‘culturalization’ through objects and images. This transformation, however, resulted in some contradictions, that left some of these objects in ambiguous positions. This case study aims to contribute …
The artist and the stone
As práticas da arte contemporânea são frequentemente descritas ou como projetos ou como processos. Mas quando é possível dizer que um projeto ou processo artístico está finalizado? Como é avaliado? Este se torna um produto? Neste artigo, apresentarei uma obra de arte específica, The Artist and the Stone, onde um artista e um bloco de pedra de 22 toneladas foram trazidos da Palestina até Barcelona, Espanha. Por meio deste exemplo, irei explorar as…
The artist and the stone
Contemporary art practices are often described as projects or processes. But when can we say that an art project or process is finished? How is it valued? Does it become a product? In this article, I will present a particular artwork, ‘The Artist and the Stone,’ that consisted in taking an artist and a 2 tone stone from Palestine to Barcelona, Spain. Through this example, I will explore the different temporalities of process, project, and product…
Religion, Materiality, and Fetishism
In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in materiality in the anthropology of religion as well as in anthropology more generally. This entry considers the materiality of religion through the particular prism of the polemical concept of fetishism. Discussions around the fetish and fetishism have touched on central issues of the materiality of religion: reification and value, personification and agency, territoriality and materiality i…
Art and Participation
In recent decades, participatory art practices have bloomed. These practices are often site specific and experimental. This interest in particular social contexts has driven artistic practice toward anthropology. Conversely, anthropologists have engaged with these practices to question the limitations of their methods and experiment with their own forms of work. This entry will explore the relationship between art and anthropology through the que…
Culture, Nation, and the Struggle for Black Atlantic Religion
In this paper, the author responds to J. Lorand Matory's paper, “The Communal Stakes of Scholarly Debate: A Retrospective on the Critical Reception of Black Atlantic Religion (2005)” and the influence that Black Atlantic Religion has had in the field of African-Brazilian studies
From Shipmates to Soldiers. Emerging Black Identities in the Rio de la Plata - by Borucki, Alex
O evento Latour
Este artigo discute o uso do conceito de "evento" na obra de Latour, em relação a como o termo tem sido utilizado na filosofia e antropologia. Meu argumento é que, no final das contas, há uma tensão entre duas vertentes do trabalho de Latour: uma mais firmemente baseada na história e no evento, e outra mais focada na simetria, hibridez e diplomacia
Stealing as a form of life
Ethics and aesthetics
The pairing of ethics and aesthetics is anything but new. The ancient Greek notion of kalokagathia was nothing but the conjunction of the beautiful and the good, as the ideal of human conduct; in particular, the conduct of aristocratic men and warriors – ‘gentlemen’. Thousands of years later, Wittgenstein concisely affirmed that ethics and aesthetics are one. What he was aiming at was probably far from Greek notions of kalokagathia: he was approa…
The Chimera Principle
The Chimera Principle: An Anthropology of Memory and Imagination is making a contribution to different fields of interest in anthropology: memory, ritual, and images, among others, bringing them to
Religion and the Everyday Life of Money in Brazil
A long tradition of social scientists has defended that in Brazil, money and social relations are in contradiction, partially as a result of Catholicism. This article shows how, on the contrary, money has always been present in Brazilian popular religion. This argument leads to a second point: Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal churches have been openly criticized for their ritual use of money. Social scientists have interpreted these practices as a forei…
Black Art in Brazil
Cleveland, Kimberly L. ( 2013) Black Art in Brazil: Expressions of Identity, University Press of Florida (Gainsville, FL), xiii + 208 pp. $74.95 hbk. Black Art in Brazil addresses a very complex, contentious and ambiguous question. What would be ‘Black Art’ in Brazil? The art produced by Black people? For Black people? An art that reflects the experience of Blacks or Black culture in Brazil? In all these cases, what does being ‘Black’ mean in Bra…
Experimentaciones participantes en arte y antropología
En las páginas que siguen voy a proponer una reflexión sobre los dos conceptos fundamentales que guían esta sección: lo experimental y la colaboración. Me aproximaré a estos conceptos de forma consecutiva, primero el uno y después el otro, desde un punto de vista diferente al propuesto en la introducción: a partir del arte. Desde este ángulo, propongo algunas consideraciones más generales sobre las colaboraciones experimentales en antropología
Introduction
The Hidden Life of Stones
In the last century, the objects of Candomblé, a religion of African origin in Bahia, suffered radical transformations in their public value. After discussing in general terms the life of 'saint' stones ( otã) in Candomblé, this article then focuses on the traces of the life history of one of these otã. This stone was seized in a police raid in a Candomblé house, and then displayed in a museum, until a legal action recently undertaken by politica…
Sorcery in the Black Atlantic
Most scholarship on sorcery and witchcraft has narrowly focused on specific times and places, particularly early modern Europe and twentieth-century Africa. And much of that research interprets sorcery as merely a remnant of premodern traditions. Boldly challenging these views, Sorcery in the Black Atlantic takes a longer historical and broader geographical perspective, contending that sorcery is best understood as an Atlantic phenomenon that has…
Dinheiro Vivo
■ For decades, social scientists have seen money and religion in Brazil as two incompatible terms. In contrast, this article shows how money has always been present in Brazilian popular religion. This argument leads to a second point: a criticism of the interpretation of Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal churches as `money fetishists', religions of neoliberalism and globalization. Neo-Pentecostals in Brazil appropriate money not just for economic ends, b…
Art and anthropology after relations
The following text is the result of a conversation between the authors in the context of the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network. The point of departure for this conversation was the recent publication of Roger Sansi's Art, anthropology and the gift (Bloomsbury, 2015), a monograph about the relation between art and anthropology. From that basis, the conversation engages with a number of concepts-from the uses of the notion of the gift…
Miracles, Rituals, Heritage
Nas ultimas décadas, a religião Afro-brasileira Candomblé atravessou um longo processo de patrimonialização. Esse processo tem girado entorno da noção de axé, ou poder ancestral, incorporado em templos, objetos e pessoas. Algumas variantes rituais ou "nações" do Candomblé tem tido mais sucesso que outras em reproduzir o seu poder ancestral, virando também mas identificáveis como objetos de cultura e patrimônio. Nesse artigo vou contrastar esse pr…
Intolerância religiosa
Art
The definition of ‘art’ is extremely complicated. Its meaning has shifted radically, in particular in the last century. Originally, in Latin, it meant ‘craft’, but then for the last few centuries, the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or poetry) were defined in contraposition to craft. In the last century, the rejection of conventional artistic standards has resulted in the paradoxical definition of contemporary art as ‘anti-art’. These cha…
The Multiple Agencies of Afro-Brazilian Religions
The debates on identity politics and the invention of tradition led the study of Afro-Brazilian religions to a certain impasse in the 1990s. However, in the last several years, the field has been totally renewed, although in different directions. In this article we will consider some of these new trends, from a wider historical engagement with the Atlantic world, through the religious field and the public sphere, to new approaches to spirit posse…
Shrines, substances, and miracles in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé
This paper discusses the relationship between people and shrines in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé. One of its main points is that shrines cannot be described solely as a particular instance or token of a general formula or type. The power of the shrine is also partially the result of extraordinary and unexpected events of cure and personal formation and transformation, often defined as 'miracles' that bond together shrines and their caret…
The artist and the stone
Contemporary art practices are often described as projects or processes. But when can we say that an art project or process is finished? How is it valued? Does it become a product? In this article, I will present a particular artwork, ‘The Artist and the Stone,’ that consisted in taking an artist and a 2 tone stone from Palestine to Barcelona, Spain. Through this example, I will explore the different temporalities of process, project, and product…
The pleasure of expense
Mauss's The Gift has captured the imagination of generations of artists. As artistic practice shifted from the production of objects to the mediation of situations of social exchange, Mauss's focus on the 'pleasure of expense' has been central, from Bataille and the situationists to relational aesthetics. In most of these cases, Mauss's arguments were used to question the market economy in ways rather more radical than he himself would have done.…
Encountering Images in Candomblé
Images" are a problem in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé in two senses. First, the presence of Catholic images in shrines has been questioned by the "re-africanization" movement in the last decades, as a form of syncretism. Second, it is often said that taking pictures or videos of rituals is not allowed. However, in my ethnographic experience, religious images, pictures and videos are all used in many Candomblé houses. How can we understan…
Images and persons in candomblé
This article explores the complex relationship between images and persons in Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion. It argues that images in Candomblé, particularly those of Catholic saints used to represent orixás, are not simply symbols but active participants in the ritual construction of personhood. Through ethnographic analysis of Candomblé practices, the article demonstrates how the manipulation of images in rituals contributes to the forma…
Catholic Saints, African Gods, black masks and white heads
CatholicSaints, African Gods,blackmasks andwhite heads:Tracing thehistory of somereligious festivals inBahia ROGER SANSI ROCA The festivals ofBonfim inSalvadorde Bahiaand Boa MorteinCachoeira haveundergone substantial changesinthelastcentury. Originally popular Catholic celebrations, in recent decades theyhave become publicly associatedwithAfro-Brazilian cultureand are now touristattractions enjoyingextensive media coverage.The argumentthatfollow…
Experimentaciones participantes en arte y antropología
En las páginas que siguen voy a proponer una reflexión sobre los dos conceptos fundamentales que guían esta sección: lo experimental y la colaboración. Me aproximaré a estos conceptos de forma consecutiva, primero el uno y después el otro, desde un punto de vista diferente al propuesto en la introducción: a partir del arte. Desde este ángulo, propongo algunas consideraciones más generales sobre las colaboraciones experimentales en antropología
Afterword. After Utopias
This afterword reflects on the concept of utopia and its relevance in contemporary art and anthropological discourse. Sansi discusses the shift from envisioning grand utopian projects to a focus on smaller, more localized 'utopias' or alternative ways of being. He explores how artistic practices and anthropological inquiries can contribute to understanding these emergent forms of utopian thinking, particularly in the context of globalization and …
Public disorder and the politics of aesthetics in Barcelona
In the last two decades, in the city of Barcelona, Spain, there has been a growing interpenetration between art practice and political activism. The MACBA, Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, played a key role in promoting 'direct action as one of the Fine Arts'. Rancière's theories of the politics of aesthetics have been very influential at the MACBA. Describing different events of political conflict around the MACBA in the recent past, thi…
Marcel Mauss et le don dans l'art contemporain
Mauss est une référence-clé de la pratique artistique de la seconde moitié du XX e siècle, au moment même où l'art contemporain commence à redéfinir ses pratiques en passant de la production d'œuvres représentatives à la production de relations sociales et d'expériences. Si l'on peut à juste titre objecter à la superficialité de certaines de ces lectures de Mauss, cet article ne s'intéresse pas tant à les critiquer qu'à comprendre comment les tra…
Catholic Saints, African Gods, black masks and white heads
CatholicSaints, African Gods,blackmasks andwhite heads:Tracing thehistory of somereligious festivals inBahia ROGER SANSI ROCA The festivals ofBonfim inSalvadorde Bahiaand Boa MorteinCachoeira haveundergone substantial changesinthelastcentury. Originally popular Catholic celebrations, in recent decades theyhave become publicly associatedwithAfro-Brazilian cultureand are now touristattractions enjoyingextensive media coverage.The argumentthatfollow…
Miragens e vitrinas
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The Hidden Life of Stones
In the last century, the objects of Candomblé, a religion of African origin in Bahia, suffered radical transformations in their public value. After discussing in general terms the life of 'saint' stones ( otã) in Candomblé, this article then focuses on the traces of the life history of one of these otã. This stone was seized in a police raid in a Candomblé house, and then displayed in a museum, until a legal action recently undertaken by politica…
Introduction
After decades of obsession with “difference,” historians, anthropologists, and other students of culture are directing their gaze to the seas and oceans as historical spaces of cultural production. Hidden dangers abound because, as historical and cultural spaces, the seas possess no visible boundaries, no inscribed landmarks, and no entitled owners; such dangers can and do, however, afford new opportunities. The seas loom up as seamless wholes th…
The Fetish in the Lusophone Atlantic
The term "fetish" has a long and complex story bound to the history of the Atlantic. It originates from the Portuguese term feitiço, magic charm, and feitiçaria (sorcery). The Portuguese recogniz ed many of the ritual practices they encountered in Africa as forms of sorcery. References to the fetish date from the seventeenth century, in Dutch and English travel accounts of the West Coast of Africa. Travelers often misrecognized the Portuguese ori…
Fetishes and Monuments
One hundred years ago in Brazil the rituals of Candomblé were feared as sorcery and persecuted as crime. Its cult objects were fearsome fetishes. Nowadays, they are Afro-Brazilian cultural works of art, objects of museum display and public monuments. Focusing on the particular histories of objects, images, spaces and persons who embodied it, this book portrays the historical journey from weapons of sorcery looted by the police, to hidden living s…
Dinheiro Vivo
■ For decades, social scientists have seen money and religion in Brazil as two incompatible terms. In contrast, this article shows how money has always been present in Brazilian popular religion. This argument leads to a second point: a criticism of the interpretation of Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal churches as `money fetishists', religions of neoliberalism and globalization. Neo-Pentecostals in Brazil appropriate money not just for economic ends, b…
Santería enthroned
The anthropology of art
Anthropology, art and cultural production – By Maruška Svašek
Intolerância religiosa
The hidden history of Capoeira
Beautiful/Ugly
Appropriation as practice. Art and identity in Argentina by Schneider, Arnd
Der Fetisch
Sorcery in the Black Atlantic
Most scholarship on sorcery and witchcraft has narrowly focused on specific times and places, particularly early modern Europe and twentieth-century Africa. And much of that research interprets sorcery as merely a remnant of premodern traditions. Boldly challenging these views, Sorcery in the Black Atlantic takes a longer historical and broader geographical perspective, contending that sorcery is best understood as an Atlantic phenomenon that has…
Marcel Mauss et le don dans l'art contemporain
Mauss est une référence-clé de la pratique artistique de la seconde moitié du XX e siècle, au moment même où l'art contemporain commence à redéfinir ses pratiques en passant de la production d'œuvres représentatives à la production de relations sociales et d'expériences. Si l'on peut à juste titre objecter à la superficialité de certaines de ces lectures de Mauss, cet article ne s'intéresse pas tant à les critiquer qu'à comprendre comment les tra…
Images and persons in candomblé
This article explores the complex relationship between images and persons in Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion. It argues that images in Candomblé, particularly those of Catholic saints used to represent orixás, are not simply symbols but active participants in the ritual construction of personhood. Through ethnographic analysis of Candomblé practices, the article demonstrates how the manipulation of images in rituals contributes to the forma…
Shrines, substances, and miracles in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé
This paper discusses the relationship between people and shrines in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé. One of its main points is that shrines cannot be described solely as a particular instance or token of a general formula or type. The power of the shrine is also partially the result of extraordinary and unexpected events of cure and personal formation and transformation, often defined as 'miracles' that bond together shrines and their caret…
Ecstatic Encounters. B ahian Candomblé and the Quest for the Really Real. Mattijsvan de Port, Amsterdam
The Multiple Agencies of Afro-Brazilian Religions
The debates on identity politics and the invention of tradition led the study of Afro-Brazilian religions to a certain impasse in the 1990s. However, in the last several years, the field has been totally renewed, although in different directions. In this article we will consider some of these new trends, from a wider historical engagement with the Atlantic world, through the religious field and the public sphere, to new approaches to spirit posse…
‘We Worship Nature’
The Latour event
This paper discusses the use of the concept of ‘event’ in Latour's work, in relation to how the term has been used in philosophy and anthropology. My contention is that ultimately, there is a tension between two strands of Latour's work: one more firmly based on history and the event, and another more focused on symmetry, hybridity and diplomacy
Afro-Brazilians. Cultural production in a racial democracy
Encountering Images in Candomblé
Images" are a problem in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé in two senses. First, the presence of Catholic images in shrines has been questioned by the "re-africanization" movement in the last decades, as a form of syncretism. Second, it is often said that taking pictures or videos of rituals is not allowed. However, in my ethnographic experience, religious images, pictures and videos are all used in many Candomblé houses. How can we understan…
Art (34 obras) · Sociology (28 obras) · History (25 obras) · Philosophy (22 obras) · Aesthetics (18 obras) · Art history (17 obras) · Political science (17 obras) · Computer Science (16 obras) · History (16 obras) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (14 obras)