Politiche di sviluppo e questione etnica. La cooperazione italiana IN Bosnia Erzegovina

The globalization process of the last twenty years has changed the world through international flows of people, policies and practices. International cooperation to development is a part of that process and brought International Organizations (IOs) and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) from the West to the rest of the world. In my thesis I analyze the Italian NGOs that worked in Bosnia Herzegovina (BH) to understand which development projects they realized and how they faced the ethnic issue that characterized BH. I consider the relation shaped between Italian NGOs and Bosnian civil society as an object of ethnic interests. In BH, once part of former Yugoslavia, the transition from the communist regime to a democratic country has not been completed. BH’s social conditions are characterized by strong ethnic divisions. The legacy of the early 1990s crisis was a phenomenon of ethnic identities created before the war and that still endure today. The Dayton Peace Agreement signed in 1995 granted the peace and reinforced the inter-ethnic hate between the newly recognized three principal ethnicities: Serbs, Croats and Bosniak. Through the new constitution, the institutions were characterized by division at every level, from the top to the bottom of society. Besides it was the first constitution ever written and signed outside the own country; that was the root of the state of exception that characterized BH. Thus ethnic identities culture survived through the international political involvement. At the same time ethnic groups that dominated the political debate clashed with the international organization’s democratic purpose to build a multicultural and democratic state. Ethnic and also religious differences were the instruments for a national statement that might cause the transition and development projects failure. Fifteen years later social fragmentation was still present and it established an atmosphere of daily cultural violence. Civil society suffered this condition and attended to recreate the ethnic fragmentation in every day life. Some cities became physically divided and other cities don’t tolerated the minority presence. In rural areas, the division was more explicit, from village to village, without integration. In my speech, the anthropology for development – the derivative study from applied anthropology – constitutes the point of view that I used to understand how ethnic identities still influenced the development process in BH. I done ethnographic research about the Italian cooperation for development projects that were working there in 2007. The target of research were the Italian NGOs that created a relation with Bosnian civil society; they were almost twenty divided in four main field of competences: institutional building, education, agriculture and democratization. I assumed that NGOs work needed a deep study because the bottom of society is the place where people could really change their representation and behavior. Italian NGOs operated in BH with the aim of creating sustainable development. They found cultural barricade that both institutions and civil society erected when development projects have been applied. Ethnic and religious differences were stressed to maintain boundaries and fragmented power. Thus NGOs tried to negotiate development projects by social integration. I found that NGOs worked among ethnic groups by pursuing a new integration. They often gained success among people; civil society was ready to accept development projects and overcome differences. On the other hand NGOs have been limited by political level that sustained the ethnic talk and by their representation of Bosnian issue. Thus development policies have been impeded by ethnic issue and by cooperation practices established on a top down perspective. Paradoxically, since international community has approved the political ethnic division within DPA, then the willing of development followed by funding NGOs cooperation projects was not completely successful.

Rituali indigeni in Mesoamerica. La festa di Petición de Lluvias nella Montaña di Guerrero (Messico)

Questa tesi di carattere antropologico in ambito dottorale riguarda i rituali comunitari nelle comunità indigene messicane. Il principale oggetto della ricerca è il rituale della pioggia o di Petición de Lluvia, caratterizzato sia dal sacrificio animale che da una specifica relazione di causa-effetto con l’ambiente circostante. La ricerca etnografica è cominciata dall’ipotesi di voler verificare la persistenza nel tempo, e dunque nell’attualità, di procedure cerimoniali non appartenenti, almeno nella loro forma più lineare, alla religione cattolico-cristiana. Il luogo nel quale è avvenuta tale ricerca è la regione La Montaña di Guerrero, situata nel Messico sud-occidentale, e più precisamente la zona in cui vivono le comunità di etnia Nahua di San Pedro Petlacala, Acuilpa, e Xalpatláhuac che si trovano nelle vicinanze della cittadina di Tlapa de Comonfort. In un contesto ambientale profondamente rurale come quello della Montaña di Guerrero, la persistenza dei rituali evidenzia come le risorse naturali e gli agenti atmosferici - pioggia, vento, nubi - continuino a rappresentare gli elementi centrali che condizionano le variabili economiche di sussistenza e della riproduzione sociale. Il rituale di Petición de Lluvia rappresenta il momento di congiunzione tra la stagione secca e quella piovosa, tra la semina ed il raccolto del mais. Definito come una pratica religiosa nella quale il gruppo si identifica e partecipa con varie donazioni (ofrenda o deposito rituale), suddivisibili in alimenti/oggetti/preghiere ed azioni rituali, la cerimonia esprime l’auspicio di piogge abbondanti, con le quali irrigare i campi e continuare le attività umane. Il destinatario dell’offerta è la stessa divinità della pioggia, Tlaloc per le antiche civiltà mesoamericane, invocato sotto le mentite spoglie del santo patrono del 25 aprile, San Marcos. Il rituale è contraddistinto per tutta la sua durata dalla presenza del principale specialista religioso, sacerdote in lingua spagnola oppure «Tlahmáquetl» in lingua náhuatl.

Fellow travelers: an ethnographic study of the dynamics of inter-organizational collaboration

The research is a 13-months ethnographic field work on the early operations of a Multi-party alliance active in the global field of indoor positioning. The study aims to understand and investigate empirically the challenges that at the individual and group level influence the organizing principle guiding the alliance operations and evolution. Its contribution rests on the dynamics affecting ecosystems of innovation and collaborative spaces of value co-creation in inter-organizational projects.