, we stayed at the Winter Reception and Transit Center -i.e. the refu ee camp in Slavonski Brod -on a number of occasions. At this time, this was the only place where refu ees from the war-stricken, or otherwise deprived countries could stop on their way to Western Europe. This paper deals with the methodolo ical issues, research methods and procedures (ran in from enterin the fi eld and the issues of researcher and participant roles, throu h observation and note takin to participation, and interviews) which we were employin and testin durin our stay at the camp, and which we consider si nifi cant for the understandin of the camp itself. We focus on the numerous faces of methodolo ical reductionism and methodolo ical pluralism of our research at the camp. Certain ethno raphic methods in our study were frequently reduced to their bare contours, but, upon takin a step away or their combination with other methods, they opened and created multiple doorways to the research fi eld, takin on, amon other thin s, the characteristics of investi ative work.Keywords: methodolo y, ethno raphy, refu ees, refu ee camp, participant observation, fi eldnote, interviewIn September 2015, the European long summer of migration metaphorically crossed into the lon mi ration autumn. This is the time when Hun ary closed its borders with 1 This article is to appear in the edited volume entitled Kamp, šator, granica: studije izbjeglištva u suvremenom hrvatskom kontekstu (Camp, Tent, Border: Studies of Refu eehood in the Contemporary Croatian Context) (Institute of Ethnolo y and Folklore Research, 2017), and is published here with the permission of the volume editors.
This paper explores the problems which arise when people attempt to communicate across cultural boundaries. I draw on my fieldwork experience in various settings in Eastern and Central Europe -camps, courts, schools and businesses -where I found that communication works best when trust is established, and that the necessary step to fulfil this condition was to learn how to unlearn deeply rooted assumptions on both sides. The paper begins with a discussion of racial and ethnic stereotypes, drawing on a range of insights from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science. I then turn to memory myths, suggesting how to apply recent findings from specialized memory research. In the second part of the paper, I challenge the concept of "intercultural", which can all too easily legitimate the "clash of civilisations" ideology. In order to establish real intercultural communication, I suggest that we must abandon models of verbatim translation and instead take advantage of recent anthropological insights into how language works, how meanings are socially constructed and how shared understandings are achieved. In all this, I build on the work of linguistic and legal anthropologists who are already contributing to this endeavour and conclude with some meditations on the related themes of counter-dominance and laughter. Keywords: anthropology, applicability, communication, interpreting, culture, memory, stereotypes, unlearning Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.George Iles IntroductionAnthropology is the study of what it means to be human. Its relevance and applicability to human problems has been assumed since this discipline's inception. In this paper I explore its relevance to language and communication. My specific focus is on how to avoid getting lost in translation as insiders and outsiders, experts and non-experts, the powerful and the powerless attempt to communicate across cultural boundaries. My argument is that as we enter this process of two-way communication on each side, it is important to learn, but equally to learn how to unlearn. To illustrate my thoughts, I will provide examples from my observations in various I have examined various settings in which official communication with asylum applicants takes place and present my findings from participant observation and ethnographic interviews with asylum applicants and discussions with border staff and decision makers. First, I examine how myths about memory manifest themselves during interviews in legal settings, comparing these myths with contemporary scientific findings concerning how memory works. During discussions with teachers and business personnel conducted while assisting with the teaching of "intercultural communication" and preparing educational materials for use in schools, I discovered they were interested in lists of rules about "do's and don'ts". I explore how this stance is linked to processes of stereotyping, and clarify to what extent unlearning could be helpful. Second, I focus on the failure to distinguish between language...
In the shadow of a specific form of border spectacle (De Genova 2002) and the spectacle of statistics (Stierl et al. 2016), i.e. in the shadow of the spectacle of the mass transit of refugees on their way to Western Europe in the autumn and winter of 2015/2016, the so-called profiling and detention of migrants took place. Mostly invisible to the general public, this profiling led to the forced mass movement of refugees in the opposite direction and/or their explicit detention i.e. confinement. By relying on different types of sources, ranging from public reports to our own field observations, this article deals with detentions in the Croatian part of the Balkan corridor. According to the argument offered in this article, detention can be seen as an integral part of the corridor itself and can be traced from the beginning of its establishment. Furthermore, the article presents a basic outline of what was happening in the Slavonski Brod camp after the closure of the borders on the night of March 8 th to the 9 th , 2016. It proposes a possible framework for understanding the imprisonment of hundreds of people in the camp from the perspectives of the specific "productiveness" of the camp and modes of resistance towards it.
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