The article focuses on a trope of route in contemporary Albania that is engendered in peoples’ visions about Europe and the European Union (EU). It discusses the concept of hope which is produced through repeated narratives, or “recitations”, about Europe and the EU. These narratives rhythmically generate temporality, which bridges the daily insecurities and creates positive visions of the future. The author argues that in Albania, hope represents a continuous and repetitive method of knowledge that shifts the present to the future.
COBISS.SI-ID: 38656813
Text is based on the ethnography of maritime tourists routes along the nowadays Slovene coastline. Although we will follow several theoretical debates on authenticity and hospitality this article will neither dwell on the theoretical discussion of authenticity and hospitality in general, nor will it engage in any extended sense the dilemmas about the use of the concept of authenticity in anthropological analysis. Our more focused and modest intent is to present everyday uses of authenticity within the popular and tourist discourses along the present-day Slovene coastline and to highlight the active role of individuals in the process of hospitality by using participant observation method and interviews. In particular, we will be interested in the uses of “authentic hospitality” connected to fishing tourism that was developed due to the economic and other problems within Slovene maritime fishing sector and will pose question: How authentic is hospitality on fishing boats? Our contention is that different understandings of this “authentic hospitality” attached to Slovene coastal area and fishing tourism can best be understood as holding a key element of innovation leaving the binary framework of authentic-unauthentic tension. We will focus on the case of fishing tourism in nowadays Slovene coastal town of Izola, where for many decades fishing has been the first and foremost local activity.
COBISS.SI-ID: 38632749
The paper explores the connection between the sea, sea imaginaries and lifestyle migration and is based on the ethnography of mariitme routes and life stories among small boat sailors. Through the use of qualitative longitudinal research, specifically the biographical approach, it discusses in what way sea imaginaries are the inspiration for lifestyle migrants and how they are translated into practice in situ. It introduces the idea of unbelonging developed by Rogoff (2000) in relation with migrants’ experiences. In the first part I discuss the sea as a physical place and as a significant symbol for my interlocutors in relation to the ideas of liminality and temporarily unbelonging. In the next part I put forward two representative (family) portraits in order to highlight details from individuals’ lives on a longer time perspective, while in the final part of this article I place the individual stories, sea imaginaries and people’s experiences with the maritime environment in dialogue with each other. This makes it possible to better understand the expectations, aspirations and experiences of my interlocutors and to discuss further the idea of temporarily unbelonging in practice.
COBISS.SI-ID: 38550573