The Anthropology, Heritage and Cultural Imaginary Research Group (ANTROPIA) was created with the aim of researching the processes of heritage and the transformation and reinvention of cultural imaginaries from an anthropological perspective. In particular, it proposes the anthropological study of the processes of heritage construction and activation, especially those that revolve around the categories of natural and intangible heritage, the new spiritualities as an expression of meaning, the reinvention of cultural imaginaries in the digital society and the study of inter-ethnic relations from an anthropological-historical perspective. A study especially oriented to urban, rural and virtual contexts, in the past and in the present.
The processes of patrimonialisation have acquired a special prominence in the transformations of contemporary societies, with an extension and expansion that, among other things, has ended up merging categories initially constructed as segregated groups (cultural/natural) and explicitly incorporating social actors in the process of identification and recognition of heritage through the category of intangible heritage, the value given to the institutionalisation of activations and the appeal to memory as a legitimising resource. The study of these processes –and of the negotiations, contradictions and disputes they involve– allows us to approach the policies and practices of government, governance, urban planning, territorial resource management, tourism and the construction of collective identities, from the point of view of the actions of the administration institutions, of the different social actors and, in particular, of the responses of social movements. It is also a challenge to explore the articulations between the recognition of cultural diversity, with all its variability and openness, and the construction of imaginaries of homogeneity and cultural heterogeneity and authenticity.
Transformations in the forms of social organisation, uses and management of public spaces or urban policies, whether or not they are related to processes of patrimonialisation, have an impact on the ways of imagining and inhabiting cities and constitute another one of the main ideas of this research group. A question that includes the construction and destruction of neighbourhood identities and the role of urban movements in the founding of community spheres and in the response to these transformations.
On the other hand, modern and post-modern deficits of meaning go through the recovery and reconfiguration of old forms of transcendent knowledge linked to ancient philosophies and religions. They are thus transformed into new cultural creativities linked to innovative transnational forms of ecology, spirituality, economics, politics and social relations that involve the recovery of ancestral practices and knowledge, the emergence of new values and lifestyles, the arrival of new medicines and therapies in the West, as well as the complexity of cyberspace with its networks and communities. This “re-enchantment of the world” falls within a context of progressive de-institutionalisation of religion that promotes personal research in the individual sphere and generates the phenomenon of “believing without belonging” at the same time that is articulated in modern, psycho-physical-spiritual movements that offer an experiential, emotional, mystical, strongly eclectic religiosity, with a pragmatic salvationist orientation, here and now, and a holism or universalism tinged with scientism, ecology and generic humanitarianism.
Historical anthropology plays a key role in understanding the modern paradox that manifests itself in the tension between the notion of shared humanity and the emergence of more or less exclusive identity particularisms. The contemporary world is shaped by this paradox, and globalisation brings to light new tensions between universalism and identity particularisms. The study of local responses to these global processes is another one of the group's research lines.
These main lines will allow us to approach a series of cross-cutting analytical issues, among which we must highlight gender (segregation and social stratification around imaginaries, insofar as in the articulation of these phenomena we can observe clear differences between women and men), as well as globalisation (imaginaries accompany different globalisations), identity (adaptation and/or resistance to the global), sustainability (tension between universal concepts and local realities), emancipation (utopian movements, suspicious thinking and narratives of science) and global communities (contemporary imaginaries built from the articulation between global social networks).
- Main objective: This study group was created with the aim of locating, recording and analysing contemporary social phenomena linked to the emergence, transformation and reinvention of new cultural imaginaries based on the proposed lines of research: spiritualities, tourism and the body.
- Investigate the relationship established between the body and tourist activity in order to reflect on how different imaginaries and practices of cultural consumption are articulated.
- Describe and analyse the emergence of new ways of managing health, resulting from the arrival of medicines and therapies from around the world that are reconfigured in alternative ways to the dominant biomedical paradigm.
- Investigate the emergence of a new field of social action resulting from the confluence of health and spirituality in which healing is understood as a process and personal responsibility.
- Delve into the social, cultural and political construction of the body, taking the body imaginary of the Western world as an analytical axis.
- Analyse the utopias of socio-political transformation that have been conceived and put into practice by global movements of spirituality.
- Analyse the dystopian imaginaries created and circulating among spiritual movements that conceive of global crisis and collapse as a process of human renewal.
- New spiritualities, health and wellbeing
Description and analysis of the wide variety of nutritional, therapeutic, esoteric and spiritual disciplines and techniques that have arrived in the West and through which the imaginaries of the body, health and spirituality have been modified to form a new field of social action.
- Spiritualities and utopias of transformation
Analysis of how the different imaginaries that emerge and are reproduced in contexts of groups of new spiritualities are linked to utopias of socio-political transformation, and how certain social practices are developed with the aim of implementing this agenda.
- Sustainability, food and health
Investigate the relationship between sustainability and food, in order to reflect on how different imaginaries, itineraries and food consumption practices are articulated in relation to sustainability and health.
- SANTAMARINA CAMPOS, BEATRIZ
- PDI-Catedratic/a d'Universitat
- ALBERT RODRIGO, MARIA JOSE
- PDI-Titular d'Universitat
- RUIZ TORRES, MIQUEL ANGEL
- PDI-Prof. Permanent Laboral Ppl
- MONCUSI FERRE, ALBERT
- PDI-Titular d'Universitat
- OJEDA MATA, MARIA TERESA
- PDI-Prof. Permanent Laboral Ppl
- PEREZ ALONSO, YAIZA
- Alumn.-Servei de Formacio Permanent
- Coordinador/a Curs
Tarongers Campus
Av. dels Tarongers, 4
46021 València (Valencia)
- SANTAMARINA CAMPOS, BEATRIZ
- PDI-Catedratic/a d'Universitat
