C Varvantakis
Biographic Data
| ID | 39635 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Varvantakis |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Varvantakis |
| SIGNATURE | VARVANTAKIS C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goldsmiths University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0808-2795 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Image-Maker in Residence
Children’s photography reveals the unique ‘child’s gaze’. The Children’s Photography Archive, led by Sevasti-Melissa Nolas and Christos Varvantakis and based in London, curates photographs by children
Picturing What Really Matters
Touching heritage
Drawing on ethnographic research with children in Athens, the authors examine sensual, performative and embodied aspects of children’s photographic representations of a monument that is central in the Greek national, cultural and historical discourse, the Acropolis. Moving away from the hermeneutics of cultural domination, the focus of this article is on how the pictures depicted the monument and how they were used by the children. Assuming an an…
Thinking with feeling
The article explores how the concept of 'emotional orientation' helps us to reimagine the relationship between childhood and public life. By comparing a subset of two ethnographic biographies of underprivileged children, aged 6-8 years from contrasting neighbourhoods in Hyderabad, India, we illustrate the ways in which 'emotional orientation' could mediate and signify children's experiences of public life. The analysis builds on the girls' common…
Un atto d'amore
Un atto d'amore: Manifesto Open Access per la libertà, l'integrità e la creatività nelle scienze umane e nelle scienze sociali interpretative, è il risultato di un workshop finanziato da LSE Research Infrastructure and Investment Funds dal titolo Academic Freedom, Academic Integrity and Open Access in the Social Sciences, organizzato da Andrea E. Pia e tenuto presso la London School of Economics il 9 settembre 2019
Labour of Love
Labour of Love: An Open Access Manifesto for Freedom, Integrity, and Creativity in the Humanities and Interpretive Social Sciences, is the result of an LSE Research Infrastructure and Investment-funded workshop entitled Academic Freedom, Academic Integrity and Open Access in the Social Sciences, organised by Andrea E. Pia and held at the London School of Economics on September 9, 2019
The Possibilities of Filmic Anthropology. Review of The Possibility of Spirits (2017) by Mattijs van de Port
The Possibilities of Filmic Anthropology. Review of The Possibility of Spirits (2017) by Mattijs van de Port
Photography, politics and childhood
In qualitative research with children visually oriented and multimodal approaches are identified in the literature as more appropriate for approaching children’s meanings and feelings often deemed to lie beyond the realm of language. In our own research, a comparative ethnography which enquired into the relationships between childhood and public life, with six-to-eight year olds in three cities (Athens, Hyderabad and London), we have reflexively …
Think Pieces in Analytics
Experimenting with the many potentials of anthropological analysis—that shifting interface between the empirical and the conceptual, the space and perhaps the time between ethnography and theory—is at the heart of our journal’s intellectual mission. Our aim is to publish articles that display a spirit of analytical exploration by dealing in fresh ways with their empirical materials and showing in the action of their analytical treatment new paths…
Grounding Childhood (Trans)National Identities in the Everyday
This paper engages with the lived and experiential aspects of (trans)national identities in childhood, through the exploration of an ethnographic biography of a Greek‐Albanian boy in Athens. Through a grounded ethnographic approach, we examine the ways in which he experiences and negotiates his (trans)national identity. Our analysis demonstrates the everyday subtle and sophisticated understanding of the complexities and contradictions of national…
Metaphors we experiment with in multimodal ethnography
In this paper, we argue for a view of analysis as an embodied practice and review others’ testimonies of carrying out multimodal ethnography. This review suggests that metaphors are key for communicating what happens to us in the course of the research and our subsequent sense-making practices. We identify four metaphors for communicating data collection and analytic practices: composing, meandering, plundering and time travel. We then turn to ou…
Field Notes for Amateurs
In this article we develop the idea of ethnography as a practice of desire lines. Lines of desire are pedestrian footpaths that are at once amateurish and playful, and that deviate from the grids and schemes of urban planners. We argue that ethnography has always been so at the same time as also being highly professionalized. The article explores these tensions between desire lines and professionalization as they became evident to us during a fun…
Learning to Listen
How do we recognise children's participation and their relationships with public life? Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 for the ERC funded Connectors Study on the relationship between childhood and public life, this article explores the ways in which children communicate their encounters with public life. The contemporary phenomenon of listening without hearing is discussed as this relates to the cal…
Feelings and Politics on the Streets of Java Coming of Age on the Streets of Java
Political activism across the life course
The study of political activism has neglected people’s personal and social relationships to time. Age, life course and generation have become increasing important experiences for understanding political participation and political outcomes (e.g. Brexit), and current policies of austerity across the world are affecting people of all ages. At a time when social science is struggling to understand the rapid and unexpected changes to the current poli…
Talking politics in everyday family lives
How do children encounter and relate to public life? Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 for the ERC-funded Connectors Study on the relationship between childhood and public life, this paper explores how children encounter public life in their everyday family environments. Using the instance of political talk as a practice through which public life is encountered in the home, the data presented fill imp…
(Im)possible conversations? activism, childhood and everyday life
The paper offers an analytical exploration and points of connection between the categories of activism, childhood and everyday life. We are concerned with the lived experiences of activism and childhood broadly defined and especially with the ways in which people become aware, access, orient themselves to, and act on issues of common concern; in other words what connects people to activism. The paper engages with childhood in particular because c…
YouTube, young people, and the socioeconomic crises in Greece
The overriding aim of this paper is to analyse Greek adolescents' digital video making and sharing, the voices they represent in their videos, the dialogical interactions they evoke, and how this activity relates to their everyday lives as they traverse the crises that have taken hold in their country. A focused search of YouTube content was conducted which yielded five videos for analysis. These texts were ‘re-read’ using multimodal analysis and…
A monument to dismantlement
The Palast der Republik was the parliament building of the former German Democratic Republic and an entertainment center for its people. It is currently being dismantled in a lengthy procedure that will last for a period of three years. The extended `present' of the building's removal is the focus of this article, which examines the ways in which the building is becoming a memory as it de-materializes. Throughout the text, the monumental characte…
Metaphors we experiment with in multimodal ethnography
In this paper, we argue for a view of analysis as an embodied practice and review others’ testimonies of carrying out multimodal ethnography. This review suggests that metaphors are key for communicating what happens to us in the course of the research and our subsequent sense-making practices. We identify four metaphors for communicating data collection and analytic practices: composing, meandering, plundering and time travel. We then turn to ou…
Learning to Listen
How do we recognise children's participation and their relationships with public life? Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 for the ERC funded Connectors Study on the relationship between childhood and public life, this article explores the ways in which children communicate their encounters with public life. The contemporary phenomenon of listening without hearing is discussed as this relates to the cal…
Talking politics in everyday family lives
How do children encounter and relate to public life? Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 for the ERC-funded Connectors Study on the relationship between childhood and public life, this paper explores how children encounter public life in their everyday family environments. Using the instance of political talk as a practice through which public life is encountered in the home, the data presented fill imp…
Political activism across the life course
The study of political activism has neglected people’s personal and social relationships to time. Age, life course and generation have become increasing important experiences for understanding political participation and political outcomes (e.g. Brexit), and current policies of austerity across the world are affecting people of all ages. At a time when social science is struggling to understand the rapid and unexpected changes to the current poli…
(Im)possible conversations? activism, childhood and everyday life
The paper offers an analytical exploration and points of connection between the categories of activism, childhood and everyday life. We are concerned with the lived experiences of activism and childhood broadly defined and especially with the ways in which people become aware, access, orient themselves to, and act on issues of common concern; in other words what connects people to activism. The paper engages with childhood in particular because c…
Thinking with feeling
The article explores how the concept of 'emotional orientation' helps us to reimagine the relationship between childhood and public life. By comparing a subset of two ethnographic biographies of underprivileged children, aged 6-8 years from contrasting neighbourhoods in Hyderabad, India, we illustrate the ways in which 'emotional orientation' could mediate and signify children's experiences of public life. The analysis builds on the girls' common…
Field Notes for Amateurs
In this article we develop the idea of ethnography as a practice of desire lines. Lines of desire are pedestrian footpaths that are at once amateurish and playful, and that deviate from the grids and schemes of urban planners. We argue that ethnography has always been so at the same time as also being highly professionalized. The article explores these tensions between desire lines and professionalization as they became evident to us during a fun…
A monument to dismantlement
The Palast der Republik was the parliament building of the former German Democratic Republic and an entertainment center for its people. It is currently being dismantled in a lengthy procedure that will last for a period of three years. The extended `present' of the building's removal is the focus of this article, which examines the ways in which the building is becoming a memory as it de-materializes. Throughout the text, the monumental characte…
YouTube, young people, and the socioeconomic crises in Greece
The overriding aim of this paper is to analyse Greek adolescents' digital video making and sharing, the voices they represent in their videos, the dialogical interactions they evoke, and how this activity relates to their everyday lives as they traverse the crises that have taken hold in their country. A focused search of YouTube content was conducted which yielded five videos for analysis. These texts were ‘re-read’ using multimodal analysis and…
(Im)possible conversations? activism, childhood and everyday life
The paper offers an analytical exploration and points of connection between the categories of activism, childhood and everyday life. We are concerned with the lived experiences of activism and childhood broadly defined and especially with the ways in which people become aware, access, orient themselves to, and act on issues of common concern; in other words what connects people to activism. The paper engages with childhood in particular because c…
Political activism across the life course
The study of political activism has neglected people’s personal and social relationships to time. Age, life course and generation have become increasing important experiences for understanding political participation and political outcomes (e.g. Brexit), and current policies of austerity across the world are affecting people of all ages. At a time when social science is struggling to understand the rapid and unexpected changes to the current poli…
Talking politics in everyday family lives
How do children encounter and relate to public life? Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 for the ERC-funded Connectors Study on the relationship between childhood and public life, this paper explores how children encounter public life in their everyday family environments. Using the instance of political talk as a practice through which public life is encountered in the home, the data presented fill imp…
Feelings and Politics on the Streets of Java Coming of Age on the Streets of Java
The Possibilities of Filmic Anthropology. Review of The Possibility of Spirits (2017) by Mattijs van de Port
The Possibilities of Filmic Anthropology. Review of The Possibility of Spirits (2017) by Mattijs van de Port
Photography, politics and childhood
In qualitative research with children visually oriented and multimodal approaches are identified in the literature as more appropriate for approaching children’s meanings and feelings often deemed to lie beyond the realm of language. In our own research, a comparative ethnography which enquired into the relationships between childhood and public life, with six-to-eight year olds in three cities (Athens, Hyderabad and London), we have reflexively …
Think Pieces in Analytics
Experimenting with the many potentials of anthropological analysis—that shifting interface between the empirical and the conceptual, the space and perhaps the time between ethnography and theory—is at the heart of our journal’s intellectual mission. Our aim is to publish articles that display a spirit of analytical exploration by dealing in fresh ways with their empirical materials and showing in the action of their analytical treatment new paths…
Grounding Childhood (Trans)National Identities in the Everyday
This paper engages with the lived and experiential aspects of (trans)national identities in childhood, through the exploration of an ethnographic biography of a Greek‐Albanian boy in Athens. Through a grounded ethnographic approach, we examine the ways in which he experiences and negotiates his (trans)national identity. Our analysis demonstrates the everyday subtle and sophisticated understanding of the complexities and contradictions of national…
Metaphors we experiment with in multimodal ethnography
In this paper, we argue for a view of analysis as an embodied practice and review others’ testimonies of carrying out multimodal ethnography. This review suggests that metaphors are key for communicating what happens to us in the course of the research and our subsequent sense-making practices. We identify four metaphors for communicating data collection and analytic practices: composing, meandering, plundering and time travel. We then turn to ou…
Field Notes for Amateurs
In this article we develop the idea of ethnography as a practice of desire lines. Lines of desire are pedestrian footpaths that are at once amateurish and playful, and that deviate from the grids and schemes of urban planners. We argue that ethnography has always been so at the same time as also being highly professionalized. The article explores these tensions between desire lines and professionalization as they became evident to us during a fun…
Learning to Listen
How do we recognise children's participation and their relationships with public life? Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 for the ERC funded Connectors Study on the relationship between childhood and public life, this article explores the ways in which children communicate their encounters with public life. The contemporary phenomenon of listening without hearing is discussed as this relates to the cal…
Un atto d'amore
Un atto d'amore: Manifesto Open Access per la libertà, l'integrità e la creatività nelle scienze umane e nelle scienze sociali interpretative, è il risultato di un workshop finanziato da LSE Research Infrastructure and Investment Funds dal titolo Academic Freedom, Academic Integrity and Open Access in the Social Sciences, organizzato da Andrea E. Pia e tenuto presso la London School of Economics il 9 settembre 2019
Labour of Love
Labour of Love: An Open Access Manifesto for Freedom, Integrity, and Creativity in the Humanities and Interpretive Social Sciences, is the result of an LSE Research Infrastructure and Investment-funded workshop entitled Academic Freedom, Academic Integrity and Open Access in the Social Sciences, organised by Andrea E. Pia and held at the London School of Economics on September 9, 2019
Picturing What Really Matters
Touching heritage
Drawing on ethnographic research with children in Athens, the authors examine sensual, performative and embodied aspects of children’s photographic representations of a monument that is central in the Greek national, cultural and historical discourse, the Acropolis. Moving away from the hermeneutics of cultural domination, the focus of this article is on how the pictures depicted the monument and how they were used by the children. Assuming an an…
Thinking with feeling
The article explores how the concept of 'emotional orientation' helps us to reimagine the relationship between childhood and public life. By comparing a subset of two ethnographic biographies of underprivileged children, aged 6-8 years from contrasting neighbourhoods in Hyderabad, India, we illustrate the ways in which 'emotional orientation' could mediate and signify children's experiences of public life. The analysis builds on the girls' common…
Image-Maker in Residence
Children’s photography reveals the unique ‘child’s gaze’. The Children’s Photography Archive, led by Sevasti-Melissa Nolas and Christos Varvantakis and based in London, curates photographs by children
Sociology (19 works) · Art (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Anthropology (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Aesthetics (9 works) · Children's Rights and Participation (9 works) · Ethnography (8 works) · Law (8 works)