​On the 20th of September Jordi Halfman will defend her thesis "Where Randy?" Education, Nationalism, and Playful Imaginations of Belonging on Sint Maarten. Everyone is welcome to attend this festive event at De Agnietenkapel at 12.00.

 



​Sound is not only something you hear. It is touch.
Sound is best conceived as forbidden touch: touching you whether you want it to or not.
The edited volume “The Sounds of Vacation” by Jocelyne Guilbault and Tim Rommen interrogates the ways in which Caribbean societies (historically English, Spanish, French, and Dutch) have been touched by tourism - in benign and harmful ways

Francio Guadeloupe and Jordi Halfman teamed up on an essay on the sound of the Sonesta Maho Great Bay Beach Resort and Casino on Sint Maarten. The poetic title of this bookchapter is as follows: ​All-Inclusive Resorts in Sint Maarten and Our Common Decolonial State: On Butterflies That Are Caterpillars Still in Chrysalis.

dIn the latest issue of the Dutch Anthropological journal Etnofoor, Jordi Halfman provides a reflection on the previous issue of the issue that discussed Race-ism in relation to her own, recently completed, dissertation. Here is a small preview:

The Imagining the Nation research team is co-hosting a lecture by renowned Caribbean scholar Linden Lewis on the 23rd of January. We hope to see you there! 

On the morning of the 6th of September, one year after hurricane Irma caused havoc across the Caribbean and destroyed large parts of Sint Maarten, Francio Guadeloupe was interviewed in the radio program Spraakmakers. In the interview Guadeloupe looks back at what has happened since September 2017, and then he looks forward: How are the friends and family who are still on the island struggling to build back a better life for themselves and their offspring?

You can listen to the interview (in Dutch) here.

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Who are we? And who will we become? Those were the question Dr. Francio Guadeloupe posed to the visiting 5th grade pupils from the Tamboerijn primary school who visited the University of Amsterdam as part of a whole day excursion, organized by the Move foundation. By engaging in conversations with pupils in Amsterdam, Guadeloupe and PhD researcher Halfman who was also present, are becoming increasingly able to compare the imaginations of nationness in different classrooms across our Kingdom.
 
By telling the story about his meeting with an alien Guadeloupe explained what anthropology is for him. The alien that had abducted him had asked who all these different people were. And how was it possible that all these people were so different from one another? Guadeloupe had answered the alien with a story, a story he also shared with the pupils. 
 
He explained human evolution and migration, starting with our great, great, great, grandmothers and fathers living in trees, moving upright, growing apposable thumbs, and ending with technological inventions that bring us together even more easily today. The teachers and pupils then listened to Dyna, Frenna and Ronnie Flex performing their song ‘Pull Up’, that expresses human diversity in the Dutch Kingdom today.
 
The engaged youngsters moved in their chairs and sang along before bombarding Dr. Guadeloupe with questions. Did he really believe in Aliens? Did he really meet one? What languages could he speak? And how could he speak with the alien? This last important question allowed Guadeloupe to elaborate on his insight that musical expression is a high form of intelligence which allows communication between people who do not speak each other’s languages. So even a human and an alien could share meaning by making music together. The pupils agreed.
 
Engagements such as this provide the (PhD) researchers within the imagining the nation research group with insights into the lived realities and imagined futures of those who will inherit our world. At the same time, the University of Amsterdam, and in particular the Globalizing Cultures program group to which we belong, strongly believes that inspiring and sharing knowledge with the youth of the Kingdom, is an important part of our work.

​On the 14th of November 2016, the Daily Herald published Francio Guadeloupe's reflection on the dominance of the cult of transparency. It was timely then, and equally relevant today.  

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Dear Editor,
As is the case in the wider world, here on St. Martin (Sint Maarten & Saint-Martin) too, transparency has become a hip hip hurray word; a feel good word; a word without spot or blemish. Few question how they came to love this word and idea so much. A word that is unsoiled and uncontested – and never connected to inhuman trends is a dangerous thing!
If you want to be taken seriously as being anti-establishment – regardless of the fact that you are a millionaire or you are politically well-connected – then make sure you use the word transparency in your criticism of the powers that be (or accuse your adversaries of being non-transparent towards “the people”). Politicians and wannabe politicians, policy makers, social activists and those who refer to themselves as concerned citizens, trip over themselves using that word.