Chiara Calzana and Valentina Gamberi, "Haunting Ruins: Ethnographies of Ruination and Decay" (Berghahn Books, 2025)

Apr 8, 2025

Valentina Gamberi, an anthropologist specializing in material culture, and Chiara Calzana, a researcher in historical anthropology, delve into the evocative theme of ruins and decay. They discuss how ruins serve as dynamic spaces reflecting resilience, memory, and identity. The conversation highlights the interplay between personal narratives and broader historical contexts, emphasizing how these decaying structures become sites of collective memory and resistance. Their ethnographic studies unveil the powerful connections between heritage and social realities.

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INSIGHT

Ruins as Living Spaces

Ruins aren't just physical decay; they're dynamic spaces of memory and human experience.
They offer layered perspectives on time, change, and how the past shapes the present and future.

ANECDOTE

Book's Origin

The book originated from an online panel during the pandemic and a shared fascination with the Vajont Dam disaster.
The editors' collaboration, though entirely virtual, deepened their exploration of ruins and memory.

INSIGHT

Haunting and Agency

Haunting describes ruins' latent agency, their uncontrollable impact on people emotionally and existentially.
It highlights how ruins mediate the past's presence, blurring the lines between past and present.

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In the contemporary world, ruins, rubble, and decaying material have become increasingly iconic landscapes. They can foster a more layered theory of time, change and memory. The seven ethnographic case studies in Haunting Ruins (Berghahn Books, 2025) trace human engagements with the temporal forces of ruins, which can trace the past and transform the present. Conjuring environmental humanities, the anthropology of history, memory studies, and archaeology, this fascinating new edited volume delves into the complex influence of the past on the present and the future and urges scholars to consider ruins as things to think with.

Valentina Gamberi is a MSCA-CZ Postdoctoral Fellow at the Palacký University Olomouc. She is an anthropologist focusing on material culture studies, museum and heritage studies, with a foundation in religious studies and material religion. She has conducted fieldwork in several European museums and, since 2017, in Taiwan. Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0857-2233 Email: valentina.gamberi@upol.cz

Chiara Calzana is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Turin and an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Milano-Bicocca. Her research interests lie in the fields of historical anthropology and memory studies. She conducted ethnographic fieldwork and historical research in the Vajont disaster area (Italian Alps), focusing on memorialization and monumentalization practices. Since 2023, she has been a member of the research team of the ERC Project ‘The World Behind a Word. An Anthropological Exploration of Fascist Practices and Meanings among European Youth (F-WORD)’. E-mail: chiara.calzana@unito.it

Yadong Li is a socio-cultural anthropologist-in-training. He is registered as a PhD student at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of economic anthropology, medical anthropology, hope studies, and the anthropology of borders and frontiers. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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