Anthropology

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/9870

This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Anthropology.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Imagining Greece: Sensing Antiquity in Two Athenian Museums
(University of Waterloo, 2018-05-09) Romanisin, Alecsandra; Dagtas, Secil; Liston, Maria
Physical and sensorial experiences of museums provide publics with a material ground to (re)imagine history and its relationship to contemporary society. Through these experiences, museums become venues of spatialized discourse that materialize and represent different imaginations of the past in accordance with their political and historical context. Nationalistic discourses of the 19th and early 20th centuries in Greece and Europe idealized antiquity as homogeneous and pristine (rather like white marble). There has, however, been a push in recent decades from artists, scholars, and curators to reimagine this representation of history via an open critique of the fetishized and romanticized images of antiquity. This thesis examines how the process of materialization and representation works in contemporary imaginations of Greek antiquity in two Athenian museum contexts: The Acropolis Museum’s permanent Parthenon exhibit, and the Benaki Museum’s temporary Liquid Antiquity installation. Distinct in their locations, orientations, and foci, these displays illustrate two particular products of the call to reimagine antiquity. The former employs modern display methods, a more fluid spatial organization, and more audiovisuals. Yet, it remains bound to the traditional representations of antiquity in the content and meaning of its display. The latter personifies a reimagination of antiquity and puts its critical expressions on display. The form and terms of this display, however, remain reliant on traditional representations of antiquity. By juxtaposing these two cases, I argue that imaginations of the past in museum contexts are multiple, but not boundless. Rather, they are produced and limited by the historical, spatial, and material context of their representation.
Pagan Community Online: Social Media Affordances and Limitations in Religio-Political Sociality
(University of Waterloo, 2022-01-18) Pittman, Kagan; Dagtas, Secil
Ultra-conservative and social justice politics in North America have imbued political meaning into ideas of race and religion. Norse Pagans (i.e., Heathens) are factionalizing and contesting the significances of race and gender in their religious mythology, systems of magic, and communal belonging via the Internet. This thesis focuses on the role of digital platforms in shaping the religio-political sociality of Heathens and in forming “a community in practice” that stretches across several social media platforms and individuals’ offline lives. I draw on survey data, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation in a digital ethnography of The Asatru Community (TAC), an anti-racist Heathen religious group. I approach social media and the Internet as overlapping with the offline, resulting in a multi-sited social arena in which discourses of religious and political significance occur and are inherently intertwined. I also rethink existing definitions of community online. My study takes place primarily across Facebook and Discord, where most community activity occurs. I show how sentiments of community and individual identity are religiously and politically mediated via users’ bodies and speech across multiple Social Networking Sites and forms of interaction within each site. Thus, social media facilitates the creation of aesthetic styles and obscures geographic boundaries, a process that supports a unified sense of community and identity, while also challenging the division between online and offline.
Ruptures in Canada’s Nationalist Narrative: Situating Toronto’s Former-Yugoslav Immigrants in the Indigenous-Settler Context
(University of Waterloo, 2017-01-20) Jovanovic, Stefan; Dagtas, Secil; Habib, Jasmin
With the increasing prevalence of Indigenous discourses in the public consciousness, it becomes clear that the role of immigrants in the Indigenous-Settler dynamic has yet to be understood, and is particularly understudied in its Canadian context. However, given that nearly half of the population in the City of Toronto is composed of immigrants, it presents a rich research opportunity. As a Toronto-based immigrant from Former-Yugoslavia, I decided to conduct research with my own community. This thesis investigates the positionality of the Greater Toronto Area’s (GTA) Former-Yugoslav immigrants in the context of Indigenous-Settler relations. My research suggests that this community is situated within two ruptures of the Canadian nationalist narrative – paradoxical realms of multiple co-occurring imaginaries. As displaced peoples, they are privileged beneficiaries of the Canadian state while simultaneously being denied access to the Whiteness of the Canadian-Canadian ethnic identity. The ruptures are exposed by the relational positionality of Indigenous peoples to Former-Yugoslavs; in other words, Indigenous peoples play a central role in the identity of the GTA’s Former-Yugoslav immigrants. The very existence of Indigenous peoples in Canada shatters the illusion of inclusivity in the multiculturalist narrative by exposing (1) the rupture of injustices acted upon Indigenous peoples by the Canadian state, which maintains its marginalization of these communities via multiculturalism; and (2) the rupture of the relational nature of Whiteness by challenging it as a monolithic identifier of ethno-racial categorization in favour of pluralistic forms of identity. Thus, Former-Yugoslav immigrants are Settlers who have potential for solidarity with Indigenous peoples.
“The System is Built to Exclude Them”: Using Sociality to Manage Health Amongst Women Experiencing Homelessness
(University of Waterloo, 2020-01-22) Elliott, Kate, 1996-; Dagtas, Secil; Lo, Adrienne
The lives of women experiencing homelessness are often invisible from both statistics and the public eye. Yet, to support the population, specifically their health, their lived experiences must first be understood. Practicing engaged anthropology, this research uses a combination of non-participant observation, a focus group, and semi-structured interviews with both residents and staff at a shelter open to women, families, and trans and non-binary individuals. The shelter, Valdridge House, is in a medium-sized city in Southern Ontario. Using anthropological understandings of structural violence and gendered dynamics of homelessness alongside the data collected, this research explores how women experiencing homelessness manage their health through sociality within the shelter. Adapting to the perceived inaccessibility of the healthcare system, the residents use sociality to narrate their mental health and trauma, placing blame on their environment for their situation rather than individual fault. Here, they create support amongst residents without any perceived judgement. However, alongside this supportive dynamic, it is shown that structural violence still impacts the shelter sociality negatively, where theft and tensions are still present alongside the group bonding.

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Browsing Anthropology by Author "Dagtas, Secil"