Valerio Simoni
Biographic Data
| ID | 646013 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Valerio Simoni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Valerio |
| FAMILY NAME | Simoni |
| SIGNATURE | SIMONI V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9517-0253 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
A ‘Simple Life’ as a ‘Good Life’?: Insights from Cuban and Ecuadorian Return Migration
This article examines the moral deliberations and value-creation strategies of Cuban and Ecuadorian return migrants who question the common-sense view that upward social mobility drives migration and strive to reimagine life in their homeland accordingly. By reassessing notions of virtuous economic practice and activating moral repertoires outside the field of migration, returnees attempt to carve out a ‘simple life’ oriented toward frugality, mo…
Nelson H. H. Graburn - a tribute collection
To make a difference: Responding to migration's demands in returns to Cuba
The article focuses on the predicaments faced by return migrants to Cuba and how they respond to societal pressures to make a valuable difference 'back home', opening analytical avenues at the juncture of the anthropology of ethics and morality and migration. It does so by uncovering five distinct but complementary ways in which returnees respond to migration-related demands. Conceptualized as efforts to 'make a difference', it first considers th…
Comparative moves: "The Pursuit of Value and Belonging in Transnational Migration Toward a "Better Life
Moving beyond comparison as a method that juxtaposes community-based case studies, this article explores how migrants with different backgrounds and trajectories themselves deploy comparison in their everyday lives and decision-making. To do so, it examines Cuban and Ecuadorian migrants' comparative appraisal of different places, values, and visions of a "better life", shedding new light on the motives, stakes, and effects of their endeavors. The…
Remittances and morality: Family Obligations, Development, and the Ethical Demands of Migration
Remittances have moral dimensions that, albeit implicitly addressed in migration literature, have not yet been the focus of explicit attention and analysis by social scientists. Building on recent developments in the anthropology of ethics and morality, this article proposes theoretical and analytical pathways to address this important but often neglected aspect of remittances. It does so mainly via a critical analysis of existing scholarship on …
Encountering Tourism
Tourism affects the lives of an increasing number of people across the world and has been growing and diversifying immensely since the turn of the 21st century. Anthropological approaches to tourism have also expanded from the early contributions of the 1970s, which tended to focus on the nature of tourism and its “impact” on peripheral host communities. These first interventions see anthropologists theorizing tourism as a “secular ritual,” study…
Tourism, Migration, and Back in Cuba
Working in Cuba and on Cuban migrants to Spain for a number of years, I realize that thought of Cuba tends to be overdetermined by the location from which one sees the island.Polarizing views often prevail, notably due to the political profiling of the country by mainstream media and governments.For example, seen from the leftist circles I frequented in the Swiss Italian canton where I grew up, Cuba gripped the imagination because of its peculiar…
True Love and Cunning Love: Negotiating Intimacy, Deception and Belonging in Touristic Cuba
Ethnographier les affects: Captures, résistances, attachements
Intensité viscérale et vitale, l’affect s’est imposé comme sujet d’étude en sciences sociales durant la dernière décennie au point de déclencher un «tournant affectif» (Clough et al. 2007). L’enjeu de ce numéro est d’explorer l’intérêt de développer cette thématique en anthropologie et le potentiel des ethnographies de l’affect ou, plus précisément comme nous le suggérons, des affects. Nous allons dans un premier temps situer l’émergence d’un int…
Informal Guiding Enacting Immediacy, Informality and Authenticity in Cuba
To better conceptualize the tourism encounter, scholars have highlighted the importance of mediators, notably tourist guides, in framing visitors’ experiences of a destination, encouraging to move beyond “hosts and guests”, “tourists and locals” binaries. The study of informal touristic Encounters in Cuba helps problematize the identification of the tourist guide, highlighting the stakes of such categorization in a context of tightly regulated, s…
Approaching Difference, Inequality, and Intimacy in Tourism: A View from Cuba
Based on ethnography of touristic encounters in Cuba, the article reflects on competing approaches to difference, inequality, and intimacy in tourism and in anthropology. Comparing the understandings of tourists and Cubans involved in these informal engagements, of the Cuban authorities, and of scholars and commentators, three idealized scenarios and modes of interpretation are teased out. Rather than assessing their degree of accuracy or suggest…
Capitalism Is Just around the Corner
Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba
Based on a detailed ethnography, this book explores the promises and expectations of tourism in Cuba, drawing attention to the challenges that tourists and local people face in establishing meaningful connections with each other. Notions of informal encounter and relational idiom illuminate ambiguous experiences of tourism harassment, economic transactions, hospitality, friendship, and festive and sexual relationships. Comparing these various con…
Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba
Du site de l'éd.: Based on a detailed ethnography, this book explores the promises and expectations of tourism in Cuba, drawing attention to the challenges that tourists and local people face in establishing meaningful connections with each other. Notions of informal encounter and relational idiom illuminate ambiguous experiences of tourism harassment, economic transactions, hospitality, friendship, and festive and sexual relationships. Comparing…
Rethinking Euro-anthropology: Part three. Early career scholars forum
Economization, moralization, and the changing moral economies of 'capitalism' and 'communism' among Cuban migrants in Spain
This article aims to establish a dialogue between approaches in economic anthropology and the anthropology of ethics and morality, assessing the complementarity and the possible points of juncture between these two theoretical lines of enquiry, their analytical potential, as well as their limits. It highlights the importance, for research on moral economies, of uncovering what counts as 'economic' and as 'moral' in a given empirical context, and …
Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change: Introduction
This text introduces the articles in the dossier considering the contributions of studies of gender and masculinities for anthropological theory in the last two decades. Taking into account the scholarship of authors that marked these studies in the mid-1990s, we explore continuities and advances in the field. We show how current debates on gender and masculinity suggest that the main insights developed during this period are still relevant. The …
Breadwinners, sex machines and romantic lovers: Entangling masculinities, moralities, and pragmatic concerns in touristic Cuba
Experiences of sexual and love relationships with tourist women lead Cuban men to articulate and act upon different – often contradictory – models of masculinity. Gossiping among peers, it is common to brag about one’s sexual conquests and exploits with tourist women; in contrast, when interacting with foreigners, men tend to insist on their allegiance to a romantic lover ideal. Intimate experiences with tourist partners also lead to reassess rel…
Intimacy and Belonging in Cuban Tourism and Migration
Building on current anthropological literature on intimacy, this article focuses on the way intimate relations mediate different narratives and experiences of belonging. It explores conflicting interpretations of intimacy as they emerge in Cuban tourism and migration and enable or obstruct different allegiances. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Cubans and tourists in Cuba, and among Cuban migrants in the city of Barcelona (Spain), the articl…
Tourism and transformation: Negotiating metaphors, experiencing change
The article introduces this special issue on tourism and transformation. After offering a brief review of the place and significance of ‘transformation’ in social sciences studies of tourism – from ‘impact studies’ to ethnographies of tourists and, more recently, ‘tourist media studies’ – we propose to take one step further and focus our attention on the performativity and reflexivity of ‘transformation’. Our main argument is that much may be gai…
From tourist to person: The value of intimacy in touristic Cuba
Building on tourism scholarship on existential authenticity, touristic intimacy, and the limitations of the tourist role, the article provides an empirically grounded analysis of how the value of intimacy was expressed and negotiated in the course of encounters between foreign tourists and members of the visited population in Cuba. Tourism-related identifications in this Caribbean country are shaped by local notions of tourism hustling and pose a…
Coping with ambiguous relationships: Sex, tourism, and transformation in Cuba
Relationships between foreign tourists and members of the visited population in Cuba tend to be ridden with ambiguities with regard to their instrumental and commoditized dimensions. In the realm of sexual encounters, these ambiguities become a source of moral controversy, as they call into question notions of ‘sex tourism’ and ‘prostitution’. Focusing on how foreign men travelling to Cuba account for sexual relationships with Cuban women, this a…
The Morality of Friendship in Touristic Cuba
This article focuses on friendship and its controversial enactments in touristic Cuba, paying particular attention to its moral implications. It starts by considering how the issues of authenticity, transience and inequality played out and informed the possibilities for friendship between foreign tourists and members of the Cuban population, leading the protagonists involved to formulate their moral assumptions about friendship, outline its main …
Intimate stereotypes: The Vicissitudes of Being Caliente in Touristic Cuba
Dans la Cuba touristique contemporaine les stéréotypes à propos du caractère caliente (« chaud ») du peuple cubain, dont l'origine remonte au passé colonial de l'île, circulent amplement. A partir de données recueillies au cours de neuf mois de travail ethnographique centré sur les rencontres intimes entre touristes étrangers et habitants de l'île, l'article met en lumière les usages pratiques de ces stéréotypes dans les interactions touristiques…
Sociologie du tourisme
Sociologie du tourisme, by Saskia Cousin and Bertrand Reau, Paris, Editions la Decouverte, 2009, 126 pp., €9.50 (paperback), ISBN 978-2-7071-5255-8 Sociologie du Tourisme is a concise publication t
Remittances and morality: Family Obligations, Development, and the Ethical Demands of Migration
Remittances have moral dimensions that, albeit implicitly addressed in migration literature, have not yet been the focus of explicit attention and analysis by social scientists. Building on recent developments in the anthropology of ethics and morality, this article proposes theoretical and analytical pathways to address this important but often neglected aspect of remittances. It does so mainly via a critical analysis of existing scholarship on …
Economization, moralization, and the changing moral economies of 'capitalism' and 'communism' among Cuban migrants in Spain
This article aims to establish a dialogue between approaches in economic anthropology and the anthropology of ethics and morality, assessing the complementarity and the possible points of juncture between these two theoretical lines of enquiry, their analytical potential, as well as their limits. It highlights the importance, for research on moral economies, of uncovering what counts as 'economic' and as 'moral' in a given empirical context, and …
Intimacy and Belonging in Cuban Tourism and Migration
Building on current anthropological literature on intimacy, this article focuses on the way intimate relations mediate different narratives and experiences of belonging. It explores conflicting interpretations of intimacy as they emerge in Cuban tourism and migration and enable or obstruct different allegiances. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Cubans and tourists in Cuba, and among Cuban migrants in the city of Barcelona (Spain), the articl…
From tourist to person: The value of intimacy in touristic Cuba
Building on tourism scholarship on existential authenticity, touristic intimacy, and the limitations of the tourist role, the article provides an empirically grounded analysis of how the value of intimacy was expressed and negotiated in the course of encounters between foreign tourists and members of the visited population in Cuba. Tourism-related identifications in this Caribbean country are shaped by local notions of tourism hustling and pose a…
Intimate stereotypes: The Vicissitudes of Being Caliente in Touristic Cuba
Dans la Cuba touristique contemporaine les stéréotypes à propos du caractère caliente (« chaud ») du peuple cubain, dont l'origine remonte au passé colonial de l'île, circulent amplement. A partir de données recueillies au cours de neuf mois de travail ethnographique centré sur les rencontres intimes entre touristes étrangers et habitants de l'île, l'article met en lumière les usages pratiques de ces stéréotypes dans les interactions touristiques…
Tourism and transformation: Negotiating metaphors, experiencing change
The article introduces this special issue on tourism and transformation. After offering a brief review of the place and significance of ‘transformation’ in social sciences studies of tourism – from ‘impact studies’ to ethnographies of tourists and, more recently, ‘tourist media studies’ – we propose to take one step further and focus our attention on the performativity and reflexivity of ‘transformation’. Our main argument is that much may be gai…
Tourism, Migration, and Back in Cuba
Working in Cuba and on Cuban migrants to Spain for a number of years, I realize that thought of Cuba tends to be overdetermined by the location from which one sees the island.Polarizing views often prevail, notably due to the political profiling of the country by mainstream media and governments.For example, seen from the leftist circles I frequented in the Swiss Italian canton where I grew up, Cuba gripped the imagination because of its peculiar…
Approaching Difference, Inequality, and Intimacy in Tourism: A View from Cuba
Based on ethnography of touristic encounters in Cuba, the article reflects on competing approaches to difference, inequality, and intimacy in tourism and in anthropology. Comparing the understandings of tourists and Cubans involved in these informal engagements, of the Cuban authorities, and of scholars and commentators, three idealized scenarios and modes of interpretation are teased out. Rather than assessing their degree of accuracy or suggest…
From ethnographers to tourists and back again: On positioning issues in the anthropology of tourism
Dans cet article, nous discutons de la question du positionnement des ethnographes dans la recherche anthropologique sur le tourisme, et des implications plus larges de celui-ci sur la collecte et l’interpretation des donnees de terrain. Nos reflexions proviennent de recherches menees dans deux contextes touristiques differents, a savoir a la fois d’une observation participante detaillee des rencontres informelles entre locaux et touristes a Cuba…
Rethinking Euro-anthropology: Part three. Early career scholars forum
Coping with ambiguous relationships: Sex, tourism, and transformation in Cuba
Relationships between foreign tourists and members of the visited population in Cuba tend to be ridden with ambiguities with regard to their instrumental and commoditized dimensions. In the realm of sexual encounters, these ambiguities become a source of moral controversy, as they call into question notions of ‘sex tourism’ and ‘prostitution’. Focusing on how foreign men travelling to Cuba account for sexual relationships with Cuban women, this a…
The Morality of Friendship in Touristic Cuba
This article focuses on friendship and its controversial enactments in touristic Cuba, paying particular attention to its moral implications. It starts by considering how the issues of authenticity, transience and inequality played out and informed the possibilities for friendship between foreign tourists and members of the Cuban population, leading the protagonists involved to formulate their moral assumptions about friendship, outline its main …
To make a difference: Responding to migration's demands in returns to Cuba
The article focuses on the predicaments faced by return migrants to Cuba and how they respond to societal pressures to make a valuable difference 'back home', opening analytical avenues at the juncture of the anthropology of ethics and morality and migration. It does so by uncovering five distinct but complementary ways in which returnees respond to migration-related demands. Conceptualized as efforts to 'make a difference', it first considers th…
Comparative moves: "The Pursuit of Value and Belonging in Transnational Migration Toward a "Better Life
Moving beyond comparison as a method that juxtaposes community-based case studies, this article explores how migrants with different backgrounds and trajectories themselves deploy comparison in their everyday lives and decision-making. To do so, it examines Cuban and Ecuadorian migrants' comparative appraisal of different places, values, and visions of a "better life", shedding new light on the motives, stakes, and effects of their endeavors. The…
From ethnographers to tourists and back again: On positioning issues in the anthropology of tourism
Dans cet article, nous discutons de la question du positionnement des ethnographes dans la recherche anthropologique sur le tourisme, et des implications plus larges de celui-ci sur la collecte et l’interpretation des donnees de terrain. Nos reflexions proviennent de recherches menees dans deux contextes touristiques differents, a savoir a la fois d’une observation participante detaillee des rencontres informelles entre locaux et touristes a Cuba…
Scaling cigars in the Cuban tourism economy
Taking scale as an object of analysis (Tsing 2000), this article examines how competing scale-making projects emerge in different layers of the Cuban tourism economy. I consider how tourists and Cubans interact along contested chains of production and distribution of cigars, and therefore become entangled in bundles of ideas, discourses, practices and materialities. These constitute different scaling propositions on which tourists and Cubans conv…
Sociologie du tourisme
Sociologie du tourisme, by Saskia Cousin and Bertrand Reau, Paris, Editions la Decouverte, 2009, 126 pp., €9.50 (paperback), ISBN 978-2-7071-5255-8 Sociologie du Tourisme is a concise publication t
Intimate stereotypes: The Vicissitudes of Being Caliente in Touristic Cuba
Dans la Cuba touristique contemporaine les stéréotypes à propos du caractère caliente (« chaud ») du peuple cubain, dont l'origine remonte au passé colonial de l'île, circulent amplement. A partir de données recueillies au cours de neuf mois de travail ethnographique centré sur les rencontres intimes entre touristes étrangers et habitants de l'île, l'article met en lumière les usages pratiques de ces stéréotypes dans les interactions touristiques…
Tourism and transformation: Negotiating metaphors, experiencing change
The article introduces this special issue on tourism and transformation. After offering a brief review of the place and significance of ‘transformation’ in social sciences studies of tourism – from ‘impact studies’ to ethnographies of tourists and, more recently, ‘tourist media studies’ – we propose to take one step further and focus our attention on the performativity and reflexivity of ‘transformation’. Our main argument is that much may be gai…
From tourist to person: The value of intimacy in touristic Cuba
Building on tourism scholarship on existential authenticity, touristic intimacy, and the limitations of the tourist role, the article provides an empirically grounded analysis of how the value of intimacy was expressed and negotiated in the course of encounters between foreign tourists and members of the visited population in Cuba. Tourism-related identifications in this Caribbean country are shaped by local notions of tourism hustling and pose a…
Coping with ambiguous relationships: Sex, tourism, and transformation in Cuba
Relationships between foreign tourists and members of the visited population in Cuba tend to be ridden with ambiguities with regard to their instrumental and commoditized dimensions. In the realm of sexual encounters, these ambiguities become a source of moral controversy, as they call into question notions of ‘sex tourism’ and ‘prostitution’. Focusing on how foreign men travelling to Cuba account for sexual relationships with Cuban women, this a…
The Morality of Friendship in Touristic Cuba
This article focuses on friendship and its controversial enactments in touristic Cuba, paying particular attention to its moral implications. It starts by considering how the issues of authenticity, transience and inequality played out and informed the possibilities for friendship between foreign tourists and members of the Cuban population, leading the protagonists involved to formulate their moral assumptions about friendship, outline its main …
Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change: Introduction
This text introduces the articles in the dossier considering the contributions of studies of gender and masculinities for anthropological theory in the last two decades. Taking into account the scholarship of authors that marked these studies in the mid-1990s, we explore continuities and advances in the field. We show how current debates on gender and masculinity suggest that the main insights developed during this period are still relevant. The …
Breadwinners, sex machines and romantic lovers: Entangling masculinities, moralities, and pragmatic concerns in touristic Cuba
Experiences of sexual and love relationships with tourist women lead Cuban men to articulate and act upon different – often contradictory – models of masculinity. Gossiping among peers, it is common to brag about one’s sexual conquests and exploits with tourist women; in contrast, when interacting with foreigners, men tend to insist on their allegiance to a romantic lover ideal. Intimate experiences with tourist partners also lead to reassess rel…
Intimacy and Belonging in Cuban Tourism and Migration
Building on current anthropological literature on intimacy, this article focuses on the way intimate relations mediate different narratives and experiences of belonging. It explores conflicting interpretations of intimacy as they emerge in Cuban tourism and migration and enable or obstruct different allegiances. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Cubans and tourists in Cuba, and among Cuban migrants in the city of Barcelona (Spain), the articl…
Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba
Based on a detailed ethnography, this book explores the promises and expectations of tourism in Cuba, drawing attention to the challenges that tourists and local people face in establishing meaningful connections with each other. Notions of informal encounter and relational idiom illuminate ambiguous experiences of tourism harassment, economic transactions, hospitality, friendship, and festive and sexual relationships. Comparing these various con…
Tourism and Informal Encounters in Cuba
Du site de l'éd.: Based on a detailed ethnography, this book explores the promises and expectations of tourism in Cuba, drawing attention to the challenges that tourists and local people face in establishing meaningful connections with each other. Notions of informal encounter and relational idiom illuminate ambiguous experiences of tourism harassment, economic transactions, hospitality, friendship, and festive and sexual relationships. Comparing…
Rethinking Euro-anthropology: Part three. Early career scholars forum
Economization, moralization, and the changing moral economies of 'capitalism' and 'communism' among Cuban migrants in Spain
This article aims to establish a dialogue between approaches in economic anthropology and the anthropology of ethics and morality, assessing the complementarity and the possible points of juncture between these two theoretical lines of enquiry, their analytical potential, as well as their limits. It highlights the importance, for research on moral economies, of uncovering what counts as 'economic' and as 'moral' in a given empirical context, and …
Capitalism Is Just around the Corner
True Love and Cunning Love: Negotiating Intimacy, Deception and Belonging in Touristic Cuba
Ethnographier les affects: Captures, résistances, attachements
Intensité viscérale et vitale, l’affect s’est imposé comme sujet d’étude en sciences sociales durant la dernière décennie au point de déclencher un «tournant affectif» (Clough et al. 2007). L’enjeu de ce numéro est d’explorer l’intérêt de développer cette thématique en anthropologie et le potentiel des ethnographies de l’affect ou, plus précisément comme nous le suggérons, des affects. Nous allons dans un premier temps situer l’émergence d’un int…
Informal Guiding Enacting Immediacy, Informality and Authenticity in Cuba
To better conceptualize the tourism encounter, scholars have highlighted the importance of mediators, notably tourist guides, in framing visitors’ experiences of a destination, encouraging to move beyond “hosts and guests”, “tourists and locals” binaries. The study of informal touristic Encounters in Cuba helps problematize the identification of the tourist guide, highlighting the stakes of such categorization in a context of tightly regulated, s…
Approaching Difference, Inequality, and Intimacy in Tourism: A View from Cuba
Based on ethnography of touristic encounters in Cuba, the article reflects on competing approaches to difference, inequality, and intimacy in tourism and in anthropology. Comparing the understandings of tourists and Cubans involved in these informal engagements, of the Cuban authorities, and of scholars and commentators, three idealized scenarios and modes of interpretation are teased out. Rather than assessing their degree of accuracy or suggest…
Tourism, Migration, and Back in Cuba
Working in Cuba and on Cuban migrants to Spain for a number of years, I realize that thought of Cuba tends to be overdetermined by the location from which one sees the island.Polarizing views often prevail, notably due to the political profiling of the country by mainstream media and governments.For example, seen from the leftist circles I frequented in the Swiss Italian canton where I grew up, Cuba gripped the imagination because of its peculiar…
Encountering Tourism
Tourism affects the lives of an increasing number of people across the world and has been growing and diversifying immensely since the turn of the 21st century. Anthropological approaches to tourism have also expanded from the early contributions of the 1970s, which tended to focus on the nature of tourism and its “impact” on peripheral host communities. These first interventions see anthropologists theorizing tourism as a “secular ritual,” study…
Remittances and morality: Family Obligations, Development, and the Ethical Demands of Migration
Remittances have moral dimensions that, albeit implicitly addressed in migration literature, have not yet been the focus of explicit attention and analysis by social scientists. Building on recent developments in the anthropology of ethics and morality, this article proposes theoretical and analytical pathways to address this important but often neglected aspect of remittances. It does so mainly via a critical analysis of existing scholarship on …
Nelson H. H. Graburn - a tribute collection
To make a difference: Responding to migration's demands in returns to Cuba
The article focuses on the predicaments faced by return migrants to Cuba and how they respond to societal pressures to make a valuable difference 'back home', opening analytical avenues at the juncture of the anthropology of ethics and morality and migration. It does so by uncovering five distinct but complementary ways in which returnees respond to migration-related demands. Conceptualized as efforts to 'make a difference', it first considers th…
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (17 works) · Cuban History and Society (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy (11 works) · Tourism (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (6 works) · Environmental ethics (6 works) · Geography (6 works)