Scriptiebank overzicht

Silence is often described in paradoxical terms, “loud”, “heavy”, “muted”, or “deafening”, reflecting its complex and contradictory nature. This dissertation explores the lived experiences and narratives of Burundian returnees, with a focus on the events of 1993 and 2015. Marked by violence, displacement and return, these events serve as points of departure for understanding returnees’ interconnected narratives that emerge from realities of political conflict and forced displacement. In particular, it examines how silence is constructed and expressed within these narratives. While expressions of silence vary, returnees’ experiences are consistently marked by the space silence occupies and the meaning it holds in relation to how return is perceived and interpreted. Based on short-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bujumbura, Burundi, in March 2025, this research uses a combination of various qualitative methods, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, informal meetings and interactions.

In a context where a highly politicised discourse surrounding return converges with a long-standing institutionalised culture of silence, this dissertation argues that silence in Burundi functions as an ambivalent space of negotiation between being silent and being silenced, capable of both upholding and subverting power. Drawing on the notion of historicity, the relationality between the past, present and future, it explores how silence operates as a language through which returnees articulate the complexities of their return. In the end, what emerges is a form of enlisement in silence, a sinking into the language of silence that permeates the everyday, as a response to legacies of violence and displacement.

This thesis investigates how Iran’s underground Heavy Metal1 scene operates as a form of cultural and political resistance within the constraints of an authoritarian state. Drawing on qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, document analysis of lyrics and artwork, and digital ethnography of online communities, the study examines how musicians and fans negotiate political identity despite censorship and moral policing. The analysis is anchored in theoretical contributions from sound studies, subcultural theory, and resistance scholarship, particularly the works of Jacques Attali and Steve Goodman. Four interrelated analytical lenses are proposed: Sonic Resistance Identity (the formation of political subjectivity through sound), Repetitive Resistance (Camus’s Sisyphean logic applied to enduring subcultural defiance), Digital Vernacular Resistance (locally adapted strategies for
navigating surveillance), and Subcultural Infiltration (the slow diffusion of Metal aesthetics into mainstream youth culture due to infrastructural fatigue). Findings show that participation in metal, despite often not overtly political, is inherently oppositional in Iran, with distinct challenges for women, whose engagement constitutes “double dissidence.” The study concludes that resistance in this context is less about overt revolution and more about the sustained creation of alternative cultural spaces, where sound becomes both a medium and a metaphor for autonomy.

Continued mobility has spawned a renewal of interest in the saliency of borders, opposing strengthened border securitisation to a borderless and globalised world. Current representations of the modern sovereign territorial nation-state and reification of territorial borders are increasingly contested, argued to be inconsistent with the construction and delineation of borders and boundaries in non-territorial terms.

Drawing on a micro-analysis of borders and boundaries, the purpose of this thesis is to uncover a ‘thick description’ of the ways in which South Sudanese refugees navigate borders during their mobility trajectories across the borderland between Uganda and South Sudan. Following refugees’ mobility trajectories, this thesis further aims to explore the threefold relation between subjective perceptions of borders and boundaries, the circumscription of communities of belonging, and evolving identity narratives. The particular borderland between Uganda and South Sudan, used as case study for this thesis, is characterised by a range of dynamic cross-border interactions and relations between both sides of the international border. While borders can divide sub-ethnic and/or linguistic communities, borderlands also lead to the creation of new and complex identities, often interrelated through linguistic, tribal, and cultural ties, as the findings of this research have indicated.

Based on semi-structured interviews conducted in different refugee settlements in northern Uganda, the results highlight a multidimensional perception of borders among refugees: both in a literal and symbolic sense. Although a deep sense of longing for South Sudan, and subsequent national identification, remains, refugees have demonstrated differing nationalistic, tribal, and linguistic identifications. As identification is not a linear process, affected by the evolution of time and space, refugees have demonstrated a multi- layered and interrelated process of nationalistic, tribal, and linguistic identification, grounded across multiple locations at once. By rethinking the logic of borders beyond their territorial materialisation, and by including a symbolic dimension (referring to cross-border tribal and linguistic boundaries), this thesis illustrates the diversity and complexity underlying refugee’s sense of belonging and interrelated identity narratives, subjected to continuous processes of identity negotiations.

Titaniumdioxide (TiO2) is een wijdverspreid ingrediënt in allerlei producten gebruikt voor het ondersteunen van de gezondheid van de mens. Sinds februari 2022 is het verboden in voeding in de EU. Aangezien in de EU de wetgeving voor het gebruik van additieven in geneesmiddelen zich baseert op de toegelaten voedingsmiddelenadditieven, had dit een rechtstreeks gevolg op het gebruik in geneesmiddelen. Hoewel de Europese Commissie voorlopig het gebruik van TiO2 toelaat in geneesmiddelen, dient het EMA een evaluatie uit te voeren tegen april 2024, waarna de Europese Commissie deze beslissing zal herevalueren. Onvoldoende wetenschappelijk bewijs en tegenstrijdige studieresultaten zorgen ervoor dat de orale toxiciteit van TiO2 een omstreden kwestie blijft. Aangezien TiO2 in veel orale geneesmiddelen aanwezig is, zou een verbod een enorm aantal producten treffen. Daarom was meer onderzoek nodig, startende met het in kaart brengen van de bestaande literatuur om een beter inzicht te krijgen in de reeks producten die beïnvloed zouden zijn. Verder was het nodig om de impact te schetsen die een mogelijk verbod zou hebben. Om deze kwestie te verduidelijken, waren meer empirisch onderbouwde inzichten uit de literatuur nodig, evenals meer inzicht in de standpunten van belanghebbenden. Hoewel eerder onderzoek naar de veiligheid van TiO2 plaatsvond, werd er geen onderzoek gedaan met als doel inzicht te verschaffen in de meningen van de verschillende belanghebbenden en hoe zij geïmpacteerd zouden zijn als een verbod zou worden ingevoerd. Belangrijke belanghebbenden zijn de zelfzorg- en farmaceutische industrie, academische onderzoekers, handelsorganisaties zoals EFPIA en AESGP, patiënten en patiëntenorganisaties, regelgevers, beleidsmakers, overheidsinstanties, artsen en apothekers. Deze inzichten waren nodig omdat al deze belanghebbenden beïnvloed zouden worden door een mogelijk verbod op TiO2. Bijgevolg kunnen ze verschillende perspectieven en prioriteiten hebben, wat kan resulteren in verschillende meningen. Daarom was het belangrijk om inzicht te verschaffen in hun visies, zodanig de nodige toekomstige stappen omtrent deze problematiek in kaart werden gebracht en adviezen werden geformuleerd.

This research set out to systematically and empirically assess the harms of contemporary Nigerian-based piracy across multiple bearers and interest dimensions. To do so, an innovative harm assessment framework, developed by Greenfield and Paoli (2013) was employed. The assessment framework, a multi-step exercise comprised of distinct analytical phases and processes, required the articulation of business models for each of the primary modes of Nigerian-based piracy, the identification of possible harms and bearers, the evaluation of the incidence and severity of actual harms, the rating and prioritization of harms and finally, investigating potential causes of the identified harms. To do so, a mixed-methods approach was employed relying on both primary and secondary data sources. Methods included an extensive literature review, content analysis of over 400 piracy incident reports and semi-structured interviews.

Information about resettlement preferences is important for voluntary resettlement programs to be a successful disaster risk reduction strategy. This study combines semi-structured interviews and structured household surveys which includes a discrete choice experiment to elicit ex-ante resettlement preferences of households that live in landslide prone areas. We use a mixed logit model and latent class model to assess resettlement preferences and to investigate differences in preferences between socioeconomic groups. We find that, in general, people are willing to resettle away from a landslide prone area to a safer area and to an area that is accessible by roads. The willingness to resettle increases when additional arable land is provided, when the extended family can come along and when monetary compensation is offered. However, the relative importance of these attributes varies among socioeconomic groups. More wealthy households show a greater willingness to resettle and attach more importance to improved road infrastructure, while poorer respondents are less willing to resettle and attach more importance to whether their family can move along. Although the majority of households are willing to resettle, previous resettlement attempts were not always successful and individual willingness is not translated into actions. This can be attributed to the fact that little unused land is available in highly populated areas which may results in border disputes at the resettlement destination. In addition, resettling is costly and the effective monetary compensation received by resettlers is often low (and not in line with the government’s promises). Finally, group dynamics also play a role: households mainly want to resettle along with their (extended) family. Hence, if there is no consensus among a large part of the community to resettle, the status quo remains.

The Cofán people of Zábalo, a community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, have always engaged pragmatically on an everyday basis with their forest-based lifestyle and relations with the government, corporations and outsiders (fuesu a’i). However, in recent years the community has been dealing with growing uncertainty, internal economic inequality, high unemployment, and an Ecuadorian state that extends governmental control, while also neglecting the needs of people in this region. A myriad of factors discussed in this paper, including the increased integration of outside commodities into the Cofáns’ daily life, have led me to believe that unless the Cofán gain access to a steady source of financial income to purchase basic supplies and commodities (such as bullets, gasoline and salt), many people will have to look for work outside the community or allow oil companies to exploit their resources. The growing accumulation of wealth by just two families in the community, increasing dependence on money, lack of access to jobs, and internal political divisions have increased distrust and bad talk (ega afa’cho). Through a two-month stay with the community, where I interviewed 25 individuals (collecting 67 hours of semi-structured interviews) and produced 7 short films , I mainly sought to answer the following three questions: What political and economic changes have these people encountered in recent years? What is the community’s relationship with money, commodities and other sources of value? Can the Cofán maintain an ideal tranquil (opatssi) life and take care of the forest (tsampima coiraye), while simultaneously engaging with external influences, including restrictive laws, expansion of the capitalist frontier, commodities, the Socio Bosque environmental conservation government scheme, populist local politicians, and the potential of oil exploitation?

I conclude that Zábalo is currently a frontier of ‘negligent hegemonic control’ and is becoming more assimilated into the global economic market, creating a greater dependence on money and commodities, which is both changing people’s relationship to the concepts of opatssi and tsampima coiraye and also making them more likely find a pragmatic solution to their economic problems, such as allowing oil exploitation. Finally, this paper advocates for an engaged, activist anthropology in the context of a neoliberal world with increasing inequality, marginalized indigenous peoples, and increasing environmental degradation.