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Accepted Paper:
Uncanny Strangers
David Picard
(University of Lausanne)
Paper long abstract:
Uncanny Strangers was filmed in a fishing village in the South-West of Madagascar. It is about the relationships, collaborations and conflicts between the villagers and various human and non-human 'strangers'. These include ancestor and tromba spirits, Western NGO workers, eco-tourists, fish collectors, cattle rustlers and the ethnographic filmmaker. Through a series of everyday life episodes, it provides insights into the ontology of these 'crises' (in a Van Gennepian sense) and the strategies employed by the villagers to make them work for their economic and political purposes. Through its specific ethnographic focus, the film addresses more generic issues of crisis related to the incertitude of contacts with strangers, competing ways of dealing with the environmental crisis and the challenges of newly emerging economic activities and forms of collaboration.