Valentina Napolitano
Biographic Data
| ID | 3636237 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Valentina Napolitano |
| GIVEN NAMES | Valentina |
| FAMILY NAME | Napolitano |
| SIGNATURE | NAPOLITANO V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 114 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Divorce in time of war and displacement, between social anxiety and changing family practices: The case of northwest region of Syria in 2022
International audience
Migrations in Jordan: Reception Policies and Settlement Strategies
Jordan currently hosts the second largest percentage of registered refugees in the world: three million out of its eleven million inhabitants. Its experience in hosting migrants and refugees precedes its independence in 1946, with the arrival of Circassians, Chechens, and Armenians from the late 19th century. Jordan thus constitutes a unique observatory for reception policies and long-term settlement of different migrant groups. Based on original…
Confinement et mise en dépendance des refugié·es syrien·nes: Le camp de Zaatari en Jordanie
Cet article analyse les logiques humanitaires et sécuritaires qui font du camp de Zaatari en Jordanie un dispositif de confinement et de mise en dépendance des réfugié·es syrien·nes qui y sont installé·es depuis 2012. Il montre comment cet espace, initialement conçu pour faciliter leur accueil, devient un lieu de contrôle et d’isolement, dans un contexte marqué par les pressions des bailleurs de fonds internationaux visant l’endiguement des flux …
Confinement et mise en dépendance des refugié·es syrien·nes: Le camp de Zaatari en Jordanie
Cet article analyse les logiques humanitaires et sécuritaires qui font du camp de Zaatari en Jordanie un dispositif de confinement et de mise en dépendance des réfugié·es syrien·nes qui y sont installé·es depuis 2012. Il montre comment cet espace, initialement conçu pour faciliter leur accueil, devient un lieu de contrôle et d’isolement, dans un contexte marqué par les pressions des bailleurs de fonds internationaux visant l’endiguement des flux …
Exploring Migrations in Jordan: Insights from a Recent Symposium
This is a summary of a two-day symposium on migrations in Jordan, by the symposium coordinators Amal Khaleefa and Valentina Napolitano.The event, held in May 2023 at the French Institute for the Near East (IFPO) in Amman, aimed to challenge prevailing political narratives on migration in Jordan and deconstruct stereotypes, while exploring the role of archives in the production of these narratives.It featured four panels and a Policy Council, brin…
Managing Palestinian Refugees in Syria: A Socio-historical Overview of UNRWA’s Relationship with Syrian Authorities, 1950–70
Based on a study of previously unexplored UNRWA archives covering a period from the 1950s to the 1970s, this essay examines the relationship between the UN agency and the Syrian government agency PARI (Palestine Arab Refugee Institution) in managing Palestinian refugees in Syria.It offers insight into this decisive phase during which refugee camps were constructed and the Syrian host policy was developed.By contributing to the debates on humanita…
On a Provisional Finitude of Indebtedness
Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsValentina NapolitanoValentina Napolitano’s work engages with anthropological, political theological and critical theory debates on subjectivity, migration/mobility, anthropology of traces, borderlands, and Critical Catholic Studies. Her current work is on projects on Entangled Worlds: Sovereignty, Sanctities and Soil (htt…
Young Kings: Marcus Rashford and Theopolitical Charisma
In the aftermath of the UK loss in the 2020 Euro Football Cup, I analyze a theopolitical force of contemporary black football players, as a sovereignty from below epitomized by the figure of Marcus Rashford. Given his meteoric rise in British culture and his prominent social activism against child hunger, Rashford, among the other targets of racial abuse, is a particularly apt exemplar. By integrating anthropological ideas on theopolitics, totemi…
Beyond the Human Horizon
Amid a moment of crisis, how might the anthropology of religion shift its focus from ethics to politics? This 2021 Rappaport Lecture, delivered at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Biennial Meeting on 15 May 2021, begins by highlighting three ways in which our field has taken on politics in recent years: by troubling the distinction between ethics and politics, by thinking religion together with pressing political issues, and by …
Political Theology/Theopolitics: The Thresholds and Vulnerabilities of Sovereignty
Anthropological work on political theology has been informed by Agamben's work on the state of exception and, thus, by a Schmittian account of sovereignty as analogous to that of the God who bestows miracles. In this review, we read gestures to this analogy's limits in recent ethnographies of the state, vital force, and the Anthropocene as also pointing to the limits of anthropology's secularity and its embedding in the colonial enterprise. In so…
Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church
Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return examines contemporary migration in the context of a Roman Catholic Church eager to both comprehend and act upon the movements of peoples. Combining extensive fieldwork with lay and religious Latin American migrants in Rome and analysis of the Catholic Church’s historical desires and anxieties around conversion since the period of colonization, Napolitano sketches the dynamics of a return to a faith’s putativ…
On the Touch-Event: Theopolitical Encounters
This article addresses the ‘touch-event’ as a mediated affective encounter that pivots around a tension between intimacy and distance, seduction and sovereignty, investment and withdrawal. Through a rereading of the Pauline event of conversion to Christianity, it argues that an analysis of the evolving significance of touch-events for Catholic liturgy and a religious congregation shows the theopolitical as always already constituted within an eco…
On a Political Economy of Political Theology: El Señor de los Milagros
Introduction: The Anthropology of Catholicism
Francis, a Criollo Pope
This article explores the tension between Pope Francis as a 'trickster' and as a much-needed reformer of the Catholic Church at large. He is an exemplar of the longue durée of an embodied 'Atlantic Return' from the Americas to the 'heart' of Catholicism (Rome and the Vatican), with its ambivalent, racialized history. Through the mobilization of material religion, sensuous mediations, and the case of the Lampedusa crosses in particular, I engage w…
On a Political Economy of Political Theology: El Señor de los Milagros
Through ethnographic exploration of the Peruvian devotion of the Señor de Los Milagros (Lord of the Miracles) in Rome, this chapter discusses the intersection between Catholicism, masculinity and transnational labor. Through close exploration of Catholic orientations and the attachments they create between bodies, flesh and objects, it is argued that Brotherhoods such as the Señor de Los Milagros, should not be understood, in received sociologica…
Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader
A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and across a wide range of geographical settings. Includes material whose theme is ‘religion’, as well as contributions that expand on Catholicism’s intersection with politics and economics, secularism and modernity, sex and gender, kinship and heritage, and …
The Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader
"Aimed at a wide audience of readers, The Anthropology of Catholicism is the first companion guide to this burgeoning field within the anthropology of Christianity. Bringing to light Catholicism's long but comparatively ignored presence within the discipline of anthropology, the book introduces readers to key studies in the field, as well as to current analyses on the present and possible futures of Catholicism globally. This reader provides both…
Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader
Myriam Benraad Irak, la revanche de l'histoire. De l'occupation étrangère à l’État islamique Paris, Vendémiaire, 2015, 285 p
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
On Bone Relic Assemblages
A very interesting casket of bone relics stands in the crypt of the Naples’ Cathedral. Behind a glass window constructed into the altar, illuminated by well-placed beams of light, these are alleged
The Sacred Heart and the Religious in Movement
Devotions to the Sacred Heart are not only histories of faith, but conditions of the matter and the flesh that connect multiple places of dwelling and affective orientations. Different iconographie
Writing's edges and the sex ofEarth beings
Comment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Introduction: Materialities, Histories, and the Spatialization of State Sovereignty
In the introduction to this special section of Religion and Society, we discuss existing and potentially new intersections of border theories and religious studies in relation to two contested regions—US-Mexico and Israel-Palestine (as part of the history of the Levant)—respectively. We argue for a recentering of borderland studies through an analysis of political theologies, affective labor, and differing configurations of religious heritage, tr…
Anthropology and traces
This article explores the trace as a methodological tool and theoretical pathway in anthropology and beyond. Traces signal the limits of representation; they are the materials of knots of histories at the margins, as well as auratic presences. Through a critical reading of key ethnographic works, including an analysis of a Casa del Popolo in Rome which has been turned into a squat by Peruvian migrants, this article argues that the study of traces…
Anthropology and traces
This article explores the trace as a methodological tool and theoretical pathway in anthropology and beyond. Traces signal the limits of representation; they are the materials of knots of histories at the margins, as well as auratic presences. Through a critical reading of key ethnographic works, including an analysis of a Casa del Popolo in Rome which has been turned into a squat by Peruvian migrants, this article argues that the study of traces…
Beyond the Human Horizon
Amid a moment of crisis, how might the anthropology of religion shift its focus from ethics to politics? This 2021 Rappaport Lecture, delivered at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (SAR) Biennial Meeting on 15 May 2021, begins by highlighting three ways in which our field has taken on politics in recent years: by troubling the distinction between ethics and politics, by thinking religion together with pressing political issues, and by …
The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Nexus of Affect
Through an analysis of current celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Rome, I discuss how the Virgin echoes worries aboutpatria y fe(nation and faith) as well as a Catholic faith mobilized in reaction to secularism. The Virgin's performative celebrations awaken a phantomatic unity of the nation and the family through affect and subtle racial tensions within, first, the body of religious transnational migration related to diocesan and missiona…
Political Theology/Theopolitics: The Thresholds and Vulnerabilities of Sovereignty
Anthropological work on political theology has been informed by Agamben's work on the state of exception and, thus, by a Schmittian account of sovereignty as analogous to that of the God who bestows miracles. In this review, we read gestures to this analogy's limits in recent ethnographies of the state, vital force, and the Anthropocene as also pointing to the limits of anthropology's secularity and its embedding in the colonial enterprise. In so…
Introduction: Materialities, Histories, and the Spatialization of State Sovereignty
In the introduction to this special section of Religion and Society, we discuss existing and potentially new intersections of border theories and religious studies in relation to two contested regions—US-Mexico and Israel-Palestine (as part of the history of the Levant)—respectively. We argue for a recentering of borderland studies through an analysis of political theologies, affective labor, and differing configurations of religious heritage, tr…
Becoming a Mujercita: Rituals, Fiestas and Religious Discourses
Cet article analyse la celebration du quinzieme anniversaire des filles dans un quartier pauvre de Guadalajara au Mexique, et soutient que ce rituel est important pour comprendre l'identite de genre dans la societe mexicaine contemporaine. Au moyen de l'analyse de recits personnels et de l'interaction sociale, je soutiens que le symbolisme de la celebration du quinzieme anniversaire des filles est associe a ses aspects performatifs, aux images de…
Writing's edges and the sex ofEarth beings
Comment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Between 'traditional' and 'new' Catholic church religious discourses in urban, Western Mexico
This paper analyses processes of belonging, identity formation and construction of knowledge within and between 'new' and 'traditional' Catholic groups in a low-income neighbourhood of Guadalajara. It argues that these two expressions of the Church carry through distinctive 'progressive' and 'conservative' messages in matter of engagement with, and empowerment in social reality, notions of personal responsibility, relation to non-human agents and…
Francis, a Criollo Pope
This article explores the tension between Pope Francis as a 'trickster' and as a much-needed reformer of the Catholic Church at large. He is an exemplar of the longue durée of an embodied 'Atlantic Return' from the Americas to the 'heart' of Catholicism (Rome and the Vatican), with its ambivalent, racialized history. Through the mobilization of material religion, sensuous mediations, and the case of the Lampedusa crosses in particular, I engage w…
On Bone Relic Assemblages
A very interesting casket of bone relics stands in the crypt of the Naples’ Cathedral. Behind a glass window constructed into the altar, illuminated by well-placed beams of light, these are alleged
Confinement et mise en dépendance des refugié·es syrien·nes: Le camp de Zaatari en Jordanie
Cet article analyse les logiques humanitaires et sécuritaires qui font du camp de Zaatari en Jordanie un dispositif de confinement et de mise en dépendance des réfugié·es syrien·nes qui y sont installé·es depuis 2012. Il montre comment cet espace, initialement conçu pour faciliter leur accueil, devient un lieu de contrôle et d’isolement, dans un contexte marqué par les pressions des bailleurs de fonds internationaux visant l’endiguement des flux …
Young Kings: Marcus Rashford and Theopolitical Charisma
In the aftermath of the UK loss in the 2020 Euro Football Cup, I analyze a theopolitical force of contemporary black football players, as a sovereignty from below epitomized by the figure of Marcus Rashford. Given his meteoric rise in British culture and his prominent social activism against child hunger, Rashford, among the other targets of racial abuse, is a particularly apt exemplar. By integrating anthropological ideas on theopolitics, totemi…
La mobilisation des réfugiés palestiniens dans le sillage de la « révolution » syrienne: S’engager Sous Contrainte
Cet article propose une lecture de l’actuelle contestation syrienne à partir du point de vue des Palestiniens de Syrie. Cette communauté d’un demi-million d’individus a intégré la « révolution » syrienne et cela à partir de ses propres subjectivités et attentes. Cette étude vise, d’une part, à approfondir notre connaissance des « répertoires d’actions » et des « pratiques de résistance individuelles » adoptées au cours de la contestation syrienne…
Les réfugiés palestiniens et la contestation populaire en Syrie
Becoming a Mujercita: Rituals, Fiestas and Religious Discourses
Cet article analyse la celebration du quinzieme anniversaire des filles dans un quartier pauvre de Guadalajara au Mexique, et soutient que ce rituel est important pour comprendre l'identite de genre dans la societe mexicaine contemporaine. Au moyen de l'analyse de recits personnels et de l'interaction sociale, je soutiens que le symbolisme de la celebration du quinzieme anniversaire des filles est associe a ses aspects performatifs, aux images de…
Between 'traditional' and 'new' Catholic church religious discourses in urban, Western Mexico
This paper analyses processes of belonging, identity formation and construction of knowledge within and between 'new' and 'traditional' Catholic groups in a low-income neighbourhood of Guadalajara. It argues that these two expressions of the Church carry through distinctive 'progressive' and 'conservative' messages in matter of engagement with, and empowerment in social reality, notions of personal responsibility, relation to non-human agents and…
Guinea-Pigs: Good, Symbol and Conflict of Knowledge in Ecuador
Migration, Mujercitas, and Medicine MenLiving in Urban Mexico: Living in Urban Mexico
This book explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, it paints a picture of daily life in a low-income neighborhood of Guadalajara. The book portrays the personal experiences of the neighborhood's residents while engaging with important questions about the nature of selfhood, subjectivity, and community ide…
Migration, Mujercitas, and Medicine Men: Living in Urban Mexico
Valentina Napolitano explores issues of migration, medicine, religion, and gender in this incisive analysis of everyday practices of urban living in Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork over a ten-year period, Napolitano paints a rich and vibrant picture of daily life in a low-income neighborhood of Guadalajara. Migration, Mujercitas, and Medicine Men insightfully portrays the personal experiences of the neighborhood's residents while engagi…
Medical Profiling, Justice and Recognition: Renewals for Hope in Enduring Struggles
Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS. Edited by Diego Armus. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Pp. 326. $64.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.) Globalización, Conocimiento Y Poder: Médicos Locales Y Sus Luchas Por El Reconocimiento En Chiapas. By Steffan Igor Ayora Díaz. (México: Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, 2002. Pp. 205.) Staying Sober in Mexico City. By Stanley Brandes. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.…
Michel de Certeau: Ethnography and the challenge of plurality
devoted to his work and published since his death in 1986 attest to his broader influence.De Certeau's work has therefore been revisited and reassessed in numerous disciplinary circles.Curiously, however, anthropology, so seemingly sponge-like in its theoretical fashions, has not engaged extensively with de Certeau's work. 2 This is despite the fact that de Certeau's primary thematic concerns were peculiarly anthropological in nature.Issues of re…
The subject of anthropology: Gender, symbolism and psychoanalysis - By Henrietta L. Moore
The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Nexus of Affect
Through an analysis of current celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Rome, I discuss how the Virgin echoes worries aboutpatria y fe(nation and faith) as well as a Catholic faith mobilized in reaction to secularism. The Virgin's performative celebrations awaken a phantomatic unity of the nation and the family through affect and subtle racial tensions within, first, the body of religious transnational migration related to diocesan and missiona…
Les réfugiés palestiniens et la contestation populaire en Syrie
La mobilisation des réfugiés palestiniens dans le sillage de la « révolution » syrienne: S’engager Sous Contrainte
Cet article propose une lecture de l’actuelle contestation syrienne à partir du point de vue des Palestiniens de Syrie. Cette communauté d’un demi-million d’individus a intégré la « révolution » syrienne et cela à partir de ses propres subjectivités et attentes. Cette étude vise, d’une part, à approfondir notre connaissance des « répertoires d’actions » et des « pratiques de résistance individuelles » adoptées au cours de la contestation syrienne…
Introduction: Materialities, Histories, and the Spatialization of State Sovereignty
In the introduction to this special section of Religion and Society, we discuss existing and potentially new intersections of border theories and religious studies in relation to two contested regions—US-Mexico and Israel-Palestine (as part of the history of the Levant)—respectively. We argue for a recentering of borderland studies through an analysis of political theologies, affective labor, and differing configurations of religious heritage, tr…
Anthropology and traces
This article explores the trace as a methodological tool and theoretical pathway in anthropology and beyond. Traces signal the limits of representation; they are the materials of knots of histories at the margins, as well as auratic presences. Through a critical reading of key ethnographic works, including an analysis of a Casa del Popolo in Rome which has been turned into a squat by Peruvian migrants, this article argues that the study of traces…
On a Political Economy of Political Theology: El Señor de los Milagros
Through ethnographic exploration of the Peruvian devotion of the Señor de Los Milagros (Lord of the Miracles) in Rome, this chapter discusses the intersection between Catholicism, masculinity and transnational labor. Through close exploration of Catholic orientations and the attachments they create between bodies, flesh and objects, it is argued that Brotherhoods such as the Señor de Los Milagros, should not be understood, in received sociologica…
Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader
A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and across a wide range of geographical settings. Includes material whose theme is ‘religion’, as well as contributions that expand on Catholicism’s intersection with politics and economics, secularism and modernity, sex and gender, kinship and heritage, and …
The Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader
"Aimed at a wide audience of readers, The Anthropology of Catholicism is the first companion guide to this burgeoning field within the anthropology of Christianity. Bringing to light Catholicism's long but comparatively ignored presence within the discipline of anthropology, the book introduces readers to key studies in the field, as well as to current analyses on the present and possible futures of Catholicism globally. This reader provides both…
Anthropology of Catholicism: A Reader
Myriam Benraad Irak, la revanche de l'histoire. De l'occupation étrangère à l’État islamique Paris, Vendémiaire, 2015, 285 p
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
On Bone Relic Assemblages
A very interesting casket of bone relics stands in the crypt of the Naples’ Cathedral. Behind a glass window constructed into the altar, illuminated by well-placed beams of light, these are alleged
The Sacred Heart and the Religious in Movement
Devotions to the Sacred Heart are not only histories of faith, but conditions of the matter and the flesh that connect multiple places of dwelling and affective orientations. Different iconographie
Writing's edges and the sex ofEarth beings
Comment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
On a Political Economy of Political Theology: El Señor de los Milagros
Introduction: The Anthropology of Catholicism
Francis, a Criollo Pope
This article explores the tension between Pope Francis as a 'trickster' and as a much-needed reformer of the Catholic Church at large. He is an exemplar of the longue durée of an embodied 'Atlantic Return' from the Americas to the 'heart' of Catholicism (Rome and the Vatican), with its ambivalent, racialized history. Through the mobilization of material religion, sensuous mediations, and the case of the Lampedusa crosses in particular, I engage w…
Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church
Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return examines contemporary migration in the context of a Roman Catholic Church eager to both comprehend and act upon the movements of peoples. Combining extensive fieldwork with lay and religious Latin American migrants in Rome and analysis of the Catholic Church’s historical desires and anxieties around conversion since the period of colonization, Napolitano sketches the dynamics of a return to a faith’s putativ…
Political science (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (15 works) · Art (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · History (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (10 works) · Humanities (9 works)