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February 2025

Sun 2

February 2 - February 3

Post-Fieldwork Workshop

Istanbul , Turkey

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About

Quiet Aid: Service and Salvation in the Balkans-to-Bengal Complex (2022-27) is a collaborative research project that studies the nexus between modern aid and longstanding Islamic concerns across societies in Central Asia, South Asia and West Asia.

Copyright © Quiet Aid 2022. Materials are distributed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: Terms & Privacy Policy.

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Till Mostowlansky, the principal investigator of Q

Till Mostowlansky, the principal investigator of Quiet Aid, joins Stephan Kloos and Elmira Muratova as convenors of the workshop "Humanitarianism from Below:‬ Alter-Politics and Struggles for the Universa‬‭l‬," taking place today and tomorrow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The workshop delves into the ongoing emergence of humanitarianism from below, playing a pivotal role in reshaping humanitarian landscapes globally. Check out all the participants, presentations and read about it in our website (link in the bio).
🔗 Download Program: "Humanitarianism from Below" at quietaid.info/events.
📍 Venue: Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Dominikanerbastei 16 (4th floor, room 4 A.2), 1010 Wien.
#socialanthropology #austrianacademyofsciences #humanitarianism #alterpolitics #ethnography #genevagraduateinstitute #instituteforsocialanthropologywien
#anthropologyworkshop #anthropologyhumanitarianism
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Photo: Pol Llopart i Olivella.

We are delighted to share insights from our summer

We are delighted to share insights from our summer workshop in Venice, now officially published by Allegra lab! 📰✨. Delving into the concepts of care, duty, and service, we present the three keynote presentations as well as those from PhD participants. Check out the details and read the publication at https://allegralaboratory.net/duties-of-care-servicing-debt/.
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Reference as: Mostowlansky, Till, Giuseppe Bolotta, Gulzhan Begeyeva, Pol Llopart i Olivella & Zarina Urmanbetova. September 2023. 'Duties of Care, Servicing Debt'. Allegra Lab. https://allegralaboratory.net/duties-of-care-servicing-debt/
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#socialanthropology
#quietaid #anthropologyworkshop #CareDutyService #AllegraLab
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Photograph by: Pol Llopart i Olivella, June 2023.

Check our Open Access Publication! Till Mostowlans

Check our Open Access Publication! Till Mostowlansky and Pol Llopart i Olivella have published a commentary on Sidaway’s article ‘Beyond the Decolonial: Critical Muslim Geographies’. In the response three major themes are discussed: the problem of Muslims as ‘others’; the fraught role of religion as a universal category; and Muslim geographies as perceived in area studies and global history. You can read our publication in "Dialogues in Human Geography".
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#balkans #balkantobengal #balkantobengalcomplex #anthropology #ethnography #anthropologyofcare #geography #Islam #africa #middleeast #westasia #india #practices #religion #anthropologyofreligion #quietaid #islamic #gift #vernacularhumanitarianism #humanitarianism #decolonial #geography #history #persia #westafrica
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Photo of the Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan (Iran), by Pol Llopart i Olivella.

What does it mean to care of others and be taken c

What does it mean to care of others and be taken care of? What does it mean to orient oneself to God beyond cultivating the self? Our PhD candidate, Pol Llopart i Olivella, presented a paper at the conference In the Frictions: Fragments of Care, Health, and Wellbeing in the Balkans, in Zadar (Croatia), tackling some of these topics by drawing on his fieldwork in the Serbian Sandžak and studies of the Sufi revival in Southeastern Europe. Pol's paper (entitled Seeking Well-Being by Being-With: Care, Sociality and Divine Closeness among Sufis in the Serbian Sandžak) offered some ethnographic details and theoretical proposals on how to do an ethnography of Sufism beyond the social space of Sufi lodges (tekija), and explored how disciples cultivate relationships with dead, ill, and poor people as a way to mediate their closeness to God.
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The paper explored how categories of person, such as the ill, the poor (and also the dead), often perceived as passive actors in need of intervention are central in weaving forms of Sufi sociality, virtue and in seeking closeness to God. The ill and the poor are thought of as potentially being closer to God. Therefore, agentive actors that receive and deliver supplications to seek well-being for the wider community.
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Overall, the three-day conference was a great platform to exchange ideas with anthropologists from the region and/or working in the region. We discussed issues regarding care, well-being and health in the Balkans and beyond. From here we would like to thank again the organisers for their tremendous effort and all the participants for their fantastic and engaging papers and conversations.
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#balkans #balkantobengal #balkantobengalcomplex #anthropology #ethnography #anthropologyofcare #sufism #Islam #inthefrictions #zadaruniversity #croatia #serbia #tekija #sufi #religion #anthropologyofreligion #quietaid #islamic #tekke #sufilodge #carewellbeingbalkans #balkan_anthropology #balkan_ethnography

One of our PhD candidates, Pol Llopart i Olivella,

One of our PhD candidates, Pol Llopart i Olivella, spent three weeks initiating his fieldwork on practices of giving, aid and vernacular humanitarianism in Novi Pazar (Serbia). Pol reconnected with some of his former contacts and introduced the project to interlocutors. The visit coincided with the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan, a particularly intensive period of the Islamic calendar when it comes to giving, helping and taking care of others.
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Photos by: Pol Llopart i Olivella
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#balkans #balkantobengal #balkantobengalcomplex #anthropology #ethnography #anthropologyofcare #sufism #Islam #zakat #ramadan #sadakat #serbia #practices #sufi #religion #anthropologyofreligion #quietaid #islamic #gift #vernacularhumanitarianism #humanitarianism #balkan_anthropology #balkan_ethnography

Last few days to apply! CALL FOR PAPERS workshop

Last few days to apply!
CALL FOR PAPERS workshop
Service – Duty – Care:
Theorizing Civic Engagement from Asia to Europe and beyond
Fully funded workshop participation for two PhD students (based in or travelling from Europe) working in the field of civic engagement and care! (please click the link in the bio for more information).
In order to apply please send a description of your dissertation project (1 page) as well as a short CV (1 page) to genevaquietaid [at] gmail.com by the 15th of January, 2023.
Research on civic engagement – from humanitarianism to charity – points to the complex interplay of sentiments, emotions and convictions that motivate people to act. These range from ethics rooted in religious frameworks, to commitment to kin and surrounding social networks, to NGO-driven humanitarian discourse, to moments of national awakening, as powerfully illustrated by the example of volunteering in the war in Ukraine. In this regard, the concept of care has been extensively discussed in diverse bodies of literature across the humanities and social sciences. Meanwhile, the concepts of service and duty have received little attention, despite the prominent role that they play in articulating different forms of “doing good.” In this workshop, participants will collaboratively theorize service and duty in relation to care. They will thereby investigate how a focus on service and duty might illuminate new aspects of care and how the rich literature on care can help to theorize service and duty from anthropological and historical perspectives.
The workshop is conceived as a collaboration between the Geneva Graduate Institute (Department of Anthropology and Sociology and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy) and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Department of Asian and North African Studies and the Marco Polo Centre for Global Europe-Asia Connections).
#anthropology #ethnography #ethics #callforpapers #antropologie #antropologia #антропология #islam #care #duty #service #workshop #socialanthropology #cultural #society #socialtheory #sociology #philosophy #humanitarian #humanitarianaid

CALL FOR PAPERS workshop Service – Duty – Care

CALL FOR PAPERS workshop
Service – Duty – Care:
Theorizing Civic Engagement from Asia to Europe and beyond
Fully funded workshop participation for two PhD students (based in or travelling from Europe) working in the field of civic engagement and care! (please click the link in the bio for more information).
In order to apply please send a description of your dissertation project (1 page) as well as a short CV (1 page) to genevaquietaid [at] gmail.com by the 15th of January, 2023.
Research on civic engagement – from humanitarianism to charity – points to the complex interplay of sentiments, emotions and convictions that motivate people to act. These range from ethics rooted in religious frameworks, to commitment to kin and surrounding social networks, to NGO-driven humanitarian discourse, to moments of national awakening, as powerfully illustrated by the example of volunteering in the war in Ukraine. In this regard, the concept of care has been extensively discussed in diverse bodies of literature across the humanities and social sciences. Meanwhile, the concepts of service and duty have received little attention, despite the prominent role that they play in articulating different forms of “doing good.” In this workshop, participants will collaboratively theorize service and duty in relation to care. They will thereby investigate how a focus on service and duty might illuminate new aspects of care and how the rich literature on care can help to theorize service and duty from anthropological and historical perspectives.
The workshop is conceived as a collaboration between the Geneva Graduate Institute (Department of Anthropology and Sociology and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy) and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Department of Asian and North African Studies and the Marco Polo Centre for Global Europe-Asia Connections).

Textualities, Blessings, and Giving . Negel is a S

Textualities, Blessings, and Giving
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Negel is a Sunni village inhabited by a bit more than a hundred families in Iran's Kurdistan province. Villagers of Negel are the proud bearers of a very ancient Holy Qur’an, which today is preserved in the village mosque. Some inhabitants claim that the Text divinely appeared in one of the valleys nearby. In recent history, documented by Sarbas Nazari, the Qur'an was stolen at least twice. The people of the town coordinated a search investigating and tracing the thieves but also attempted to restitute the Text through instances of charity. Nazari documents how different ways of giving to the "poor", votive gifts, and sacrifices and the subsequent sharing of the meat with other towns were part of these restitution processes that always ended with the Qur'an returning to the village.
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Text and photographs: Pol Llopart i Olivella.
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#giving #anthropology #iran #ethnography #balkantobengal #persia #text #quran #koran #sunni #islam #socialanthropology

Reading Group . We meet on a monthly basis to disc

Reading Group
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We meet on a monthly basis to discuss recent anthropological publications that tackle aid, salvation, service, giving and care from novel ethnographic and historical perspectives. We emphasise book-length texts (such as ethnographic monographs shown in the image), treating themes so diverse and yet so interrelated such as everyday ethics of giving in Cairo, vernacular Islam in Bosnia, or international Muslim fighters and their ideas of universalism. While the Reading Group is organised by the Quiet Aid project team and based at the Geneva Graduate Institute. We are also open to interested scholars from other institutions. Get in touch (link in the bio) if you would like to know more. We are also on twitter: https://twitter.com/quietaid
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#quietaid #quietaidgeneva #theuniversalenemy #givingtogod #remakingmuslimlives #anthropology #ethnography #fieldwork #islamicgiving #care

The charitable past of Sarajevo’s Sebilj . The S

The charitable past of Sarajevo’s Sebilj
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The Sebilj (located in Sarajevo market square, Baščaršija), an Ottoman fountain and booth, is one of the most recognisable architectonic features of the Bosnian capital. Its history mixes identity and aesthetics, but also centrality in Islamic ethics and giving of alms. During Ottoman times the Sebilj functioned as a site for the pious distribution of food, fruit juice, and water to the needy. The anthropologist Kimberly Hart, writing about Turkey, notes that nowadays mosques contain worship as a practice controlled and constructed by the state. In the Ottoman period, however, mosque complexes were funded and supported by vakıfs, private pious endowments at the service of Muslim collectivities. These endowments created services for communities, or as she puts it, “social services” to people of different walks of life, mostly the poor. Today, devoid of charitable activities, visited by hundreds of tourists and locals. The structure has been replicated, and symbolically connects, Bosniak diasporic communities such as St. Louis (US) or the mainly Bosniak-inhabited territories of the Serbian and Montenegrian Sandžak.
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Text and photographs: Pol Llopart i Olivella @p.wolfkunst:
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1- The Sebilj and Baščaršijska džamija (mosque) during winter.
2 - The Sebilj on a winter night.
3- A replica of the Sebilj in the Serbian city of Novi Pazar.
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#socialanthropology #anthropology
#ethnography
#iheid
#bosna
#sarajevo
#islamicaid
#islam

Welcome to the Instagram page of "Quiet Aid", a co

Welcome to the Instagram page of "Quiet Aid", a collaborative research project that studies the nexus between modern aid and longstanding Islamic concerns across societies in Southeast Europe, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. We are located at the Graduate Institute in Geneva (Switzerland). Link in the bio.

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