Doing and Undoing Liminality
Crisis, marginality, and power in Mediterranean anthropology
As a continuation of the panel held at EASA 2024, “Doing and Undoing Liminality: Crisis, Marginality, and Power in Mediterranean Anthropology,” from 11 to 13 June, we had the pleasure of gathering in Ifrane, Morocco, for a follow-up workshop. Hosted in the unique setting of the Middle Atlas Mountains, the workshop brought together researchers working across the Mediterranean to explore how dynamics of crisis, marginality, and power unfold in the region’s shifting landscapes.
The workshop developed the concept of “doing and undoing liminality” as both a theoretical lens and an empirical framework. Discussions focused on how the Mediterranean—understood simultaneously as a meeting point and a deadly border zone—shapes and is shaped by forced migration, violent border regimes, ecological degradation, and polarized debates on religion, race, and ethnicity. Participants examined how these processes disenfranchise social formations while also generating spaces for agency, resistance, and transformation.
Contributions explored fragmented Mediterranean topographies, emphasizing how both centralized and diffuse power networks control, connect, and divide people and environments. Engaging with key anthropological theories, the workshop foregrounded liminality as a productive and critical concept to understand how margins are made, lived, and contested—through transgressions, inversions, interferences, and ambiguities.
We leave Ifrane with renewed perspectives and new questions, eager to carry this conversation forward in our future work and collaborations.
