Ester Gallo | University of Trento (original) (raw)

Papers by Ester Gallo

Gender, Place & Culture, 2019

Sociology, 2015

This article, based on semi-structured interviews, addresses masculinity in the international div... more This article, based on semi-structured interviews, addresses masculinity in the international division of reproductive labour through an analysis of the impact of gender and class on the outsourcing of elderly care services to migrant care workers. In the Italian context, characterised by a limited provision of long-term care services and by cash-for-care benefits, the strategies of men as employers of migrant care workers are shaped by class and gender. The outsourcing of care to migrant workers reproduces hegemonic masculinity in so far as male employers are able to withdraw from the ‘dirty work’. At the same time, men engage with tasks which are, in principle, kept at a distance. The employers’ family status, combined with their class background, are crucial factors in shaping the heterogeneity of men’s experiences as employers and managers of care labour, and the ways in which they make sense of their masculinity.

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience, 2018

Typically, scholars approach migrants' religions as a safeguard of cultural identity, somethi... more Typically, scholars approach migrants' religions as a safeguard of cultural identity, something that connects migrants to their communities of origin. This ethnographic anthology challenges that position by reframing the religious experiences of migrants as a transformative force capable of refashioning narratives of displacement into journeys of spiritual awakening and missionary calling. These essays explore migrants' motivations in support of an argument that to travel inspires a search for new meaning in religion.

Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022

Routledge eBooks, Mar 20, 2023

Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa , 2021

The adoption of a gendered perspective on the migration-religious nexus is relatively recent. The... more The adoption of a gendered perspective on the migration-religious nexus is relatively recent. The neglecting of gender in studies of religion and migration can be partly interpreted in relation to the influence of the liberal roots of feminist thought, which considered religion mainly as a tool of male dominance, and secularisation as an inroad to women’s emancipation. This special issue aims at advancing our understanding of gender and religion in international migration, by proceeding along four main interrelated lines. Firstly, it aims at developing a dialogue between, on the one hand, studies of longer-term contexts of immigration and, on the other, emerging work analysing religious experiences of migrant women and men in Southern European contexts.Secondly, and related to the above, this special issue engages with the need of developing further comparative research between and across different migrant religions in urban contexts. It does so by exploring the emergence of new female and male religious subjectivities in the migratory context, examining how migrant men and women renegotiate gender hierarchies in religious organizations, and the gendered religious teachings/doctrine/practices that characterise Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism. All paper contribute to problematizing a monolithic representation of ‘native’ or ‘migrant religion’, unravelling how different gendered religious institutions impact on migratory experiences, by defining male and female roles within congregations as well as in everyday life, work and the domestic division of labour. Thirdly, this edited collection fosters an original dialogue across different fields - the sociology and anthropology of religion, of migration and of gender/sexuality - based on ethnographic and qualitative methodologies. It explores the ambivalent role of religion in, on the one hand, reproducing structures of inequality across gender, sexuality, class, age, and ethnicity and, on the other, creating pathways for migrant women’s social mobility and emancipation. It also investigates how women’s agency and empowerment in the migratory context affect men’s practices and the gendered division of work in religious organisations; and how religion is used by migrant men to negotiate both hegemonic and subaltern models of masculinity. Because of the key role of religion as ‘constitutive’ of gendered social hierarchies in society, a focus on gendered religious change in the context of international migration is significant to understand the current global reorganization of multiple and intersecting inequalities. Related to this, finally, one of the aims of the special issue is to develop a relational analysis of gender and religion in contemporary forms of international mobility. By this, we mean an approach aiming at unravelling the differences, continuities, and mutual co-construction of masculinities and femininities in migrant religions.

Gallo, E., Poggio, B. and Bodio, P. 2022 'The importance of the locality in opening the university to refugee students', Opening Up the University: Teaching and Learning with Refugees (eds) C.Cantant, I.M.Cook and P.R.Kumar, 260-274, Oxford: Berghahn, 2022

This chapter highlights the importance of analysing the inclusion/exclusion of refugee students w... more This chapter highlights the importance of analysing the inclusion/exclusion of refugee students within the university in relation to the shifting socio-economic and political dynamics of the locality. It argues how a focus on the territorial embeddedness of higher education communities contributes to our understanding of the internal and external borders of universities.

Contemporanea. Rivista di storia dell'800 e del '900, XXIV(4): 663-668, 2021

Iconoclasm as an iconic event. Notes on the destruction of Muslim mosques in globalizing India ... more Iconoclasm as an iconic event. Notes on the destruction of Muslim mosques in globalizing India

On the 6th of December 1992 Ayodhya, a Hindu-majority city located in the Northern Indian State of Uttar Pradesh, witnessed the destruction of the Babri Masjid Mosque by an estimated group of 150,000 volunteers (kar sevaks) linked to the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a Hindu nationalist and right-wing organization . In the subsequent months, communal violence spread in several Indian cities leading to an estimated number of 2,000 deaths, especially among Muslims. The broad media coverage of the destruction and of the subsequent celebratory/commemorative events, its transnational diffusion through Hindutva networks and the reactions of the international community all underscore how Ayodhya became implicated in processes transcending its location in time and place. Iconoclasm can be considered a performative event through which communal conflicts and the collective image of the nation are projected to a broader audience of spectators. In marking a watershed between the past, present and future – and in capturing the collective imagination - the enactment of that iconoclastic gesture becomes ‘iconic’ insofar as it provides future generations with a specific vocabulary to narrate and perform similar events. From the 2002 Gujarat violence to the 2020 urban conflicts in Delhi, anti-Muslim pogroms have used the destruction of mosques - and the related claim for the right to build temples – as a chief way of asserting a Hindu nationalist identity.

Contemporanea. Rivista di storia dell'800 e del '900, 2021

Contemporary South Asia , 2021

This article explores inter-caste/religious (ICR) marriages in Kerala (South India) and focuses o... more This article explores inter-caste/religious (ICR) marriages in Kerala (South India) and focuses on the meanings and experiences of biological kinship when the latter is devoid of its expected emotional and relational substance, to become a 'public fiction'. With this expression, I refer to kinship relations accepted in the public sphere, but which lack foundations in the everyday realm of relatedness. ICR marriages hold an important socio-political role in Kerala as symbols of the State's development, and family ostracism is scrutinised as a form of backward communalism. However, relatives are not always willing to build affective relations. This makes ICR families managing situations where public kinship tolerance co-exists with the negation of its real emotional and intimate possibilities. The article maps how the reality of ICR marriages is turned into a fiction by persisting unspoken norms. It suggests the importance of linked discussions on fiction/ reality in the domestic sphere to the public/political role that kinship and families hold in modern postcolonial societies.

Gallo, E. 2020 ‘Global Catholicism, Gender Conversion and Masculinity’ in Cornelio, J.J., Gauthier, F., Martikainen, T. and Woodhead, L. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society, pp. 174-184. New York and London: Routledge. , 2020

This chapter discusses the relation between gender and global religion at two interrelated levels... more This chapter discusses the relation between gender and global religion at two interrelated levels. On the one hand, it explores how membership of a Catholic transnational movement produces changes in gendered family relations and in models of masculinity, in particular. On the other, it draws attention to the peculiar role played by men's conversion to principles such as chastity, vulnerability and family sacrifice in the spreading of a new global model of Western-centred Catholicism. It takes as a case in point the European Catholic reformist movement known as the Neocathecumenal Way (henceforth NCW), focusing specifically on laic missionary men within the movement. The chapter argues, firstly, that the project of creating a reformed global (Catholic) society through missionary activities rests on a gender conversion. Both men and women are required to undergo a deep transformation in terms of their identity and their family relations, and to make this transformation publicly visible and debatable. Secondly, it suggests that men's transnational missionary activities foster a specific model of globalisation. In this model, globalisation appears less as a multi-directional process that opens up spaces for syncretism and cross-cultural religious understanding, and more as a centre-periphery expansion from a (European) centre to countries that are considered geographically and substantially 'distant' from normative Catholicism.

Ethnography and Qualitative Research/Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, 2021

This special issue for Ethnography and Qualitative Research/Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa aims... more This special issue for Ethnography and Qualitative Research/Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa aims at developing an original dialogue between the sociology and anthropology of religion, of migration and of gender. The papers in this collection will draw from ethnographic and qualitative research in order to advance our understanding of the complex and multi-layered interlinkages between gender and religion in contemporary and past migration, and to develop new theoretical insights in this field.

They will do so by exploring issues such as:

o The role of religion in defining gendered discrimination and inequality in migratory contexts, at the interplay with class, ethnicity and generation;
o The relationship between religion and the construction of hegemonic/subaltern masculinities and femininities in migratory contexts;
o The role of (majority and minority) religious institutions and discourses in accommodating the presence of migrants in immigration societies, and how this impacts on gendered religious experiences and practices;
o The role of religion in promoting plural and sometimes contradictory models of masculinities and femininities within religious institutions, congregations and the civil society;
o The gendered significance of religion in the migrants’ everyday life, with reference to different spheres (family, work, associations, political participation, sport);
o If and how religious networks are mobilised at transnational level to promote gendered changes in the home countries and the diaspora;
o How migrant men and women, as believers or religious leaders, use religion to negotiate gender relations;
o The gendered iconographic cultures within specific religious traditions, cults and rituals, and how migrants draw from these cultures to foster individual, family and collective projects;
o How migrant women and men use religion to resist social hierarchies and gendered processes of racialization, downward social mobility and de-skilling;
o How gendered religious teachings are transformed/challenged in the migratory context;
o How migration challenges the association between masculinity and sacred power.

We welcome papers that address the specific methodological and ethical challenges raised by research in migration, gender and religion. We are interested in contributions that assess the fruitfulness and challenges of adopting an ethnographic or qualitative approach in this field by exploring, for instance, the extent to which the researcher’s positioning in relation to gender, ethnicity, religion and class affects his/her access to the field as well as the production of knowledge. Finally, we seek papers that consider (also comparatively) religions as different as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism or Sikhism, etc., and that focus on different migrant groups and geographical areas, including by developing cross-national analyses.

Proposals should address one on more of the above questions and reflect on methodological questions and challenges arising in researching the interplay between religion and gender in migratory contexts.

Social Anthropology, Dec 2019

This chapter will explore the meanings in South India of genealogical records for the legitimatio... more This chapter will explore the meanings in South India of genealogical records for the legitimation or critique of contemporary marriages, and particularly of love and/or intercommunity ones. Genealogical records and graphs can be considered as a relatively widespread exercise among Indians, and this partly reflects their status aspirations. The chapter will argue that the notes and narratives that accompany middle-class genealogies substantially contradict the aspiration of the YKS to create a ‘pure’ community of equal caste membership. While the YKS envisaged a genuine community of Brahmins where intercaste marriages had no place, genealogical recalling unsettles the suitability of ‘proper kinship’ and points out to the necessity to cross borders in order to achieve successful middle-class status. What is striking is that in certain records the more conventional recalling of arranged marriages is accompanied by records about elopements, intercaste love or interreligious unions. The chapter will explore how these memories differently inform today’s normative positions about what a conjugal choice should constitute, the place of love and unpredictability in contemporary marriages and, importantly, to what extent people born out of mixed unions can be considered as kin and as community fellows.

This paper discuses how Indian middle-class houses have been transformed in the XXth century and... more This paper discuses how Indian middle-class houses have been transformed in the XXth century and how their are recalled and experienced today. It suggests how the house - as a locus of generational pedigree and middle-class consumption - needs to be pluralised in its material and emotional meanings and understood in relation to what the inhabiting of certain socio-architectural spaces allows in family destinities. Among middle-class Nambudiris a radical distinction is made between, on the one hand, the ancestral house (illam) and, on the other, the newly built house in Kerala or the diaspora. This distinction is premised on the assumption that different houses allow divergent kinship possibilities. Folk ideas of the ancestral house sometimes celebrate the synergic relations between genealogical pedigree and sharing of everyday lives. Yet, living in the ancestral house is also recalled as the past dimension of ancestors’ bad practices and the normative obstacle to collective transformation. The distance set between the illam’s social architecture and mainstream history brings people to celebrate the dispersion of generational qualities of the ancestral house. Moreover, as the illam is believed to possess its own memory (orunma) and to actively dislike certain behaviours. Nambudiris conceive the possibility of modern love, consumption, intercaste mingling or meat eating only outside its spaces. New houses in Kerala or abroad symbolise the possibility to show not only successful histories of socio-geographical mobility but also the modern liberation from past hierarchies. Modern houses are conceived as the only legitimate space where more intimate family relations can be built and where children can be provided with good background education. It is significant that, in turn, ancient objects taken out after demolishing or selling of ancestral houses are rarely displayed in the new ones.

Gender, Place & Culture , 2019

This article explores the construction of migrant masculinities in the context of reproductive la... more This article explores the construction of migrant masculinities in the context of reproductive labour. It focuses on Asian Christian men working as porters in upper middle-class residential buildings in Rome (Italy). This masculinised niche of reproductive labour combines differently gendered chores: feminised tasks (cleaning and caring), which are mainly performed in the most private spaces of the home, and masculinised tasks (maintenance and security), carried out in the public or semi-public spaces of the buildings. The analysis addresses the dearth of studies on the sex-typing of jobs in the context of migrant men's work experiences. It also contributes to ongoing debates on the geography of reproductive labour and on masculinities and place, by exploring how practices of migrant reproductive labour construct private and public places. The construction of masculinities and place is shaped by the gendered racialisation of migrant men at the wider societal level, which materialises in the construction of 'dangerous' and 'respectable' urban areas. The article suggests that widespread concerns over religious difference and public security play a key role in defining migrant men's access to the workplace and in shaping work relations. 2

Gallo, E. 2017. The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship and Middle Classes in South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. , 2017

The analysis of diaries and written autobiographies is key to the understanding of how gendered s... more The analysis of diaries and written autobiographies is key to the understanding of how gendered selves are constructed across history in relation to colonial and postcolonial projects of family modernity. They offer important insights on how different individuals make sense of their class locations and construct their self in dialogue with the formation of modern collectivities. The 'objects of memory' I analyse here mirror a rich variety of work produced by Indian men and women between the late 1920s and the early 2000s. Some of them have been published, while others are circulated only within a circle of selected kin and friends. Some have been written a posteriori, once the narrated events were considered (temporally and emotionally) distant enough to be shared. Others were written 'along the way', in crucial times of social transformation and geographical displacement.

Gender, Place & Culture, 2019

Sociology, 2015

Asian Migrants and Religious Experience, 2018

Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022

Routledge eBooks, Mar 20, 2023

Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa , 2021

Contemporanea. Rivista di storia dell'800 e del '900, XXIV(4): 663-668, 2021

Iconoclasm as an iconic event. Notes on the destruction of Muslim mosques in globalizing India ... more Iconoclasm as an iconic event. Notes on the destruction of Muslim mosques in globalizing India

Contemporanea. Rivista di storia dell'800 e del '900, 2021

Contemporary South Asia , 2021

Ethnography and Qualitative Research/Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa, 2021

They will do so by exploring issues such as:

Social Anthropology, Dec 2019

Gender, Place & Culture , 2019

Gallo, E. 2017. The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship and Middle Classes in South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. , 2017

Interrogating the cultural roots of contemporary Malayali middle classes, especially the upper ca... more Interrogating the cultural roots of contemporary Malayali middle classes, especially the upper caste Nambudiri community, The Fall of Gods is based on a decade-long ethnography and historico-sociological analyses of the interconnections between colonial history, family memories, and class mobility in twentieth-century south India and in the diaspora. It traces the transformation of normative structures of kinship networks as the community moves from colonial to neo-liberal modernity across generations. The author demonstrates how past family experiences of class and geographical mobility (or immobility) are retrieved and reshaped in the present as alternative ways of conceiving kinship, transforming the idea of collective suffering and sacrifice, and strengthening the felt necessity of territorial, caste, and religious mingling. Rich in anthropological detail and incisive analyses, the book makes original contributions to the understanding of connection between gendered family relations and class mobility, and foregrounds the complex linkages between political history, memory, and the ‘private’ domain of kinship relations in the making of India’s middle classes.

Religious practices and their transformation are crucial elements of migrants' identities and are... more Religious practices and their transformation are crucial elements of migrants' identities and are increasingly politicized by national governments in the light of perceived threats to national identity. As new immigrant flows shape religious pluralism in Europe, longstanding relations between the State and Church are challenged, together with majority-faith traditions and societies’ ways of representing and perceiving themselves.

With attention to variations according to national setting, this volume explores the process of reformulating religious identities and practices amongst South Asian 'communities' in European contexts, Presenting a wide range of ethnographies, including studies of Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and Islam amongst migrant communities in contexts as diverse as Norway, Italy, the UK, France and Portugal, Migration and Religion in Europe sheds light on the meaning of religious practices to diasporic communities. It examines the manner in which such practices can be used by migrants and local societies to produce distance or proximity, as well as their political significance in various 'host' nations,

Offering insights into the affirmation of national identities and cultures and the implications of this for governance and political discourse within Europe, this book will appeal to scholars with interests in anthropology, religion and society, migration, transnationalism and gender.

This innovative book analyses the role gender plays in the relationship between globalisation, mi... more This innovative book analyses the role gender plays in the relationship between globalisation, migration and reproductive labour. Exploring the gendered experiences of migrant men and the social construction of racialised masculinities in the context of the 'international division of reproductive labour' (IDRL), it examines how new patterns of consumption and provision of paid domestic/care work lead to forms of inequality across racial, ethnic, gender and class lines. Based on an ethnographic analysis of the working and family lives of migrant men within the IDRL, it focuses on the practices and strategies of migrant men employed as domestic/care workers in Italy. The authors highlight how migrant men's experiences of reproductive labour and family are shaped by global forces and national public policies, and how they negotiate the changes and potential conflicts that their 'feminised' jobs entail. They draw on the voices of men and women of different nationalities to show how masculinities are constructed within the home through migrant men's interactions with male and female employers, women relations and their wider ethnic network. Bridging the divide between scholarship on international migration, care work and masculinity studies, this book will interest sociologists, anthropologists, economists, political scientists and social policy experts.

Submission link: https://www.siacantropologia.it/call-for-papers/ (deadline: 14 June) Titolo del ... more Submission link: https://www.siacantropologia.it/call-for-papers/ (deadline: 14 June) Titolo del panel: Parentela, temporalità e memoria. Vivere la relazionalità in "tempi di crisi" Abstract (Italiano) L'analisi antropologica della parentela è stata tradizionalmente dominata da approcci sincronici atti a catturare principalmente le dimensioni strutturali e normative della vita familiare. Se la mancanza di storicità è stata centrale nelle critiche postcoloniali allo studio della parentela, i cosiddetti "new kinship studies"-nel sottolineare il carattere processuale delle relazioni-hanno invitato gli antropologi a rielaborare il "per sempre" della parentela in termini di processo temporale.

Opening Up the University. Teaching and Learning with Refugees, 2022

The relation between the ongoing ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe and higher education systems have on... more The relation between the ongoing ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe and higher education systems have only recently started to receive attention among academics and policy makers. This partly results from an overall tendency of approaching forced migration more from the perspective of political and socio-legal problems posed to receiving countries, and less from the one of the educational requirements and knowledge skills that accompany present flows.
This chapter discusses the recent experience of the University of Trento in developing fellowship programs for refugee students and scholars. The aim is to unravel the different territorial scales within which a university operates, focusing specifically on the regional dimension and on the latter’s interconnections with the national and European level. It offers insights on the limits and the possibilities these different scales impose/offer on the type of interventions that can be implemented.
The first part of the analysis discusses how the collaboration between the University and the Provincial Government fostered establishment of reception policies for refugee students and, more recently, academics. It takes as a case in point the programs ‘SuXr - University Students for Refugees’ and ‘Refugee and Asylum Seekers at the University’. Both programs reflected the intent to create educational strategies that would bring higher educational communities closer to the lived reality of refugees, and that strengthen the collaboration between the university and the local civil society.
The second part of the chapter discusses the administrative, economic and socio-cultural challenges related to the implementation of the above-mentioned programs. It does so by referring partly to the university ‘internal’ (administrative and academic) adjustment to refugee programs, and partly to the criticism raised at the city level by right-wing populist parties. The recent victory of the Lega party in provincial election is deeply transforming the relation between the university, the local government and the urban network of civil society associations, and requires renewed educational/employment support strategies for refugee students/scholars.
Drawing from the ongoing experience of Trento, the chapter suggests the importance of analysing the opening – as well potential closing – of universities to refugees in relation not only to changing academic culture and mission, but also to shifting political situation at local, national and European levels.