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Dr Cristiana Panella

Senior Researcher
Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale
Participates in 2 items
Cristiana Panella (Ph.D., Leiden University) is a Senior Researcher in social anthropology at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren. Since 1991, her research has focused upon the illegal trade in African antiquities and international rhetoric on cultural heritage. Her current research orients on informal/illegal transnational trades driven by African migrants in Italy in relation to value chains, materiality/corporality, Beauty and political production of illegality. Her recent publications include: “Illegality” (Panella and Thomas eds. 2015, Critique of Anthropology),“‘Looters or Heroes?  Production of illegality and memories of ‘looting’ in Mali”, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 2014; Lives in motion, indeed. Interdisciplinary perspectives on Social Change in Honour of Danielle de Lame (edited book, 2012); Panella (ed.) 2012, “Central Peripheries and Contexts on the Verge. Absence and Marginality as spaces of emergence”, Africa Today. 2012 ; « Le patrimoine culturel des autres. Conditionnalités, néotraditionalisme et création de l’illicéité au Mali ». In de Lame and Mazzocchetti (eds.), 2012.

Sessions in which Dr Cristiana Panella participates

Sunday 5 June, 2016

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
11:00
11:00 - 12:30 | 1 hour 30 minutes
Heritage as an Agent of Change (Epistemologies, Ontologies, Teaching)Heritage Changes the Social OrderTourism
Heritage as an agent of changeEpistemologiesOntologiesTeaching

With regard to the main question of the 3rd ACHS Biennial Conference, "What does heritage change?" the convenors of this session propose ethnographic evidence of contradictory spheres of value by showing how encounters between official rhetorics of heritage and borderline/illegal ethics and objects produce social change. In particular, they explore, through an inclusive approach, the social and political constructions of heritage by questioning the aesthetic dichotomies of beauty/ugliness, pr...

Sessions in which Dr Cristiana Panella attends

Saturday 4 June, 2016

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
9:00
9:00 - 10:00 | 1 hour
Public event
Simultaneous translation - Traduction simultanée

What if we changed our views on heritage? And if heritage has already changed? While, on the global scene, states maintain their leading role in the mobilization of social and territorial histories, on the local scale, regions, neighbourhoods and parishes have changed. Citizens and communities too: they latch on to heritage to express an unprecedented range of belongings that no law seems to be able to take measures to contain, often to the discontent of...

18:30
18:30 - 20:00 | 1 hour 30 minutes
Public event
Simultaneous translation - Traduction simultanée

Most of what we experience as heritage emerges into conscious recognition through a complex mixture of political and ideological filters, including nationalism.  In these processes, through a variety of devices (museums, scholarly research, consumer reproduction, etc.), dualistic classifications articulate a powerful hierarchy of value and significance.  In particular, the tangible-intangible pair, given legitimacy by such international bodies as UNESCO, reproduces a selective ordering of cul...

Tuesday 7 June, 2016

Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
9:00
9:00 - 15:00 | 6 hours
Notions of HeritageHeritage Changes Itself (Geographical and Linguistic Processes of Transformation)
Heritage changes itselfHeritage and geographyLinguistic transformation of heritageNotions of heritage

Dans un texte majeur, «L’arrêt de monde», Deborah Danowski et Eduardo Viveiros de Castro explorent le thème de la fin du monde tel qu’il se déploie aujourd’hui «dans l’imaginaire de la culture mondialisée». Entre fiction, philosophie et anthropologie, ils déroulent la scène sombre de nos futurs d’espèce humaine devenue force géologique et autodestructrice vivant non plus sur mais dans une planète considérée comme un être vivant et une puissance menaçante (Gaïa). Si le spectre de la catastroph...

13:30
13:30 - 15:00 | 1 hour 30 minutes
Heritage as an Agent of Change (Epistemologies, Ontologies, Teaching)Activists and ExpertsPublic event
Heritage as an agent of changeEpistemologiesOntologiesTeaching

The roundtable will explore ideas around the concept of insignificance. That is, how things are judged to be unimportant, not worthy of conservation, meaningless, or without substantive power or influence. We will examine this notion in relation to the history, theory, and practical application of significance as a concept and method in heritage. In short, we will discuss the significance of insignificance. The notion of ‘significance’ is central to heritage conservation in many pa...