Jonathan Everts

Anxiety as social practice

This paper advances a theory of anxiety as social practice. Distinguishing between individual anxieties and anxiety as a social condition, the paper suggests that anxiety has not been subject to the same level of theoretical scrutiny as related concepts such as risk, trust, or fear. Drawing on the existential philosophy of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, the paper shows how contemporary anxieties involve the recognition of our own mortality and the destabilisation of established systems of meaning. The paper then turns to practice theory to show how social anxieties can be understood as events that rupture the fabric of everyday life, creating specific subjects and objects, ‘framed’ by different communities of practice, and becoming institutionalised to varying degrees. Focusing on a range of food-related anxieties, the paper explores the geographical and historical constitution of social anxiety, examining the process of anxiety formation and the factors that inhibit or enhance its social and spatial diffusion.

Modernisation and the practices of contemporary food shopping

This paper examines the relationship between modernisation, consumption, and society, challenging received ideas about the distinction between ‘modern’ and ‘premodern’ geographies of food consumption. While conventional accounts posit a historical progression from premodern to modern forms of consumption, associated with the rise of the supermarket and the demise of the corner store, we argue that such distinctions may, in fact, refer less to a historical process of transition than to a contrast between different forms of contemporary sociality, experienced simultaneously in different sites of consumption. By drawing critically on the work of Augé and his contrast between places and nonplaces, these ideas are then put to work empirically in an examination of contemporary food shopping in Germany, focusing particularly on notions of consumer trust. A practice-based and ethnographically informed account of food shopping in Germany shows how distinctions between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ forms of consumption involve historicised accounts of contemporary consumption spaces and their associated socialities rather than referring to historical differences per se.

Consuming and living the corner shop: belonging, remembering, socialising

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic case study in Germany investigating the relationship between shopkeepers and customers of small grocery stores owned by immigrants. The focus is on social practices within the shops and how those engaged in these activities make sense of them. Shops become meaningful through shared practices that revolve around selling and buying. However, this process is complex and not without conflict. Moving through the themes of belonging, remembering and socialising, I will show how the everyday lifeworlds of customers and shopkeepers, including their aspirations, expectations and uncertainties, intersect and how the shop emerges as a meaningful space through negotiation. Rather than looking at cultural differences alone, it is concluded that there can be significant other ways to understand multicultural places by focusing on the multiple ways that consumers engage with so-called ‘ethnic’ enterprises.

Performing Academic Practice: Using the Master Class to Build Postgraduate Discursive Competences.

How can we find ways of training PhD students in academic practices, while reflexively analysing how academic practices are performed? The papers answer to this question is based on evaluations from a British–Nordic master class. The paper discusses how master classes can be used to train the discursive skills required for academic discussion, commenting and reporting. Methods used in the master class are: performing and creative arts pedagogical exercises, the use of written provocations to elicit short papers, discussion group exercises, and training in reporting and in panel discussion facilitated by a meta-panel discussion. The authors argue that master classes have the potential to further develop advanced-level PhD training, especially through their emphasis on reflexive engagement in the performance of key academic skills.

INVASIVE LIFE, COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE, AND COMMUNITIES OF FATE

Abstract The article starts from the premise that invasive life has the capacity to produce human communities. Invasive life is conceptualized as a way in which humans categorize proliferating organisms as ‘non‐native’ to a particular territory. The article focuses on the kind of relationship of human beings to invasive life that invokes a sense of ‘being under attack’ on the human side. It is argued that the threat of invasive life produces ‘communities of fate’, which are theorized for the sake of this article in close relation to the concept of ‘communities of practice’. The social dynamics set in motion by such community formation are further analysed in relation to two different case studies: (1) the emergence of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Mexico, and (2) the invasive plants eradication campaign of a group of activists in Germany. The article concludes by discussing the merits of analysing social dynamics and community formation in relation to challenges posed by invasive life.

Das Gerede um Migration und Integration

Von der fur die gegenwartigen Integrationsdebatten typischen Leitdifferenz ‚guter‘ versus ‚schlechter‘ Migrant, die im offentlich-medialen Diskurs um aktuelle Mobilitatsformate moralisiert und nutzenorientiert als anekdotische Projektionsflachen konstruiert werden, geht Jonathan Everts in seinem Beitrag aus. Dazu greift Everts aktuelle Grenzverschiebungen im EU-Innen- und Ausenraum auf, die innereuropaische und globale Mobilitatsbewegungen verstarken. Am Beispiel der Debatten und Praktiken um die sogenannte ‚Armutseinwanderung‘ aus Sudosteuropa, der Inszenierung der ‚Fluchtlingsstrome‘ auf Lampedusa, an der EU-Ausengrenze sowie in Mitten deutscher Grosstadte (NSU-Morde) macht Everts neue Grenzregime und ihre diskursiven Fundamentalisierungen der gemeinschaftlich-orientierten Debatten deutlich. Im Ergebnis pladiert Everts fur eine neue, differenziert-humanistische Sicht (der Forschung) auf Einwanderung innerhalb heutiger multikultureller Gesellschaften, die okonomistische und menschenverachtende Argumentationsmuster deutlich zuruckweist.

PANGAEA'S RETURN: TOWARDS AN ONTOLOGY OF INVASIVE LIFE

Abstract Invasive life has received much attention in recent years, being a prime example of the complex socio‐natural entanglements characterizing the present condition of the world. In this article we argue for an ontology of invasive life, consisting of three aspects. First, invasive life does indeed exist; second, it is deeply entangled with political action; and third, it has the capacity to produce new assemblages of socio‐natural phenomena. A recognition of these ontological premises opens up for analyses that go beyond the discussions of scientific moral judgement, and which will be a necessary part of reformulating the politics of human–nonhuman relations. The articulation of an invasive life ontology and its associated political project is inspired by, and vice versa serves as an introduction for, the following articles in this special issue, which address various aspects of these concerns.