Dr Olivier Allard | Associated Researcher

Former Member
Mobilities, Migrations, Reconfiguration of Spaces
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, D-10117 Berlin
Email: olivier.allard  ( at )  ehess.fr Tel: +49(0) 30 / 20 93 70700

Home Institution : EHESS | Position : Associate professor (maître de conférences) at EHESS | Disciplines : Anthropology |

Biography

Olivier Allard is associate professor at EHESS and a member of the Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2011, having previously studied social sciences in France. 

He specializes on indigenous people in lowland South America. Since 2007, he has worked on the region of the Orinoco Delta (Venezuela and Guyana), in particular with Warao Amerindians.

The ambivalence of citizenship in a South American borderlands: Amerindians and nation-states during a time of crisis

I study the political and social life of a South American borderland that is largely inhabited by Amerindians: the border between Venezuela and Guyana is regularly crossed by people (especially Venezuelans who are fleeing the collapse of their country) and goods (especially fuel smuggled from Venezuela and commodities brought from Guyana) – even though it is officially closed. Indeed, it is also a disputed border, whose Guyanese side is claimed by Venezuela as its “Guayana esequiba”. I focus on the crucial position of Amerindians in this borderland: they have played an important role in the definition, implementation and contestation of national borders, and have been affected in specific ways by nation- and state-building projects. It offers an opportunity to relate and discuss two slightly different concepts of citizenship. On the one hand, Amerindians have long been treated as lesser members of the community, minors who should be protected until they reach political maturity, which has been conditioned by their acculturation to the language, norms, and habits of national (creole) society. On the other hand, those who inhabit a borderland can always be suspected of turning over to the neighbouring state, i.e. of having uncertain loyalties and potentially subverting the national community: “internal others” can always turn into real, external, others. Three main threads will be pursued, enabling to develop the broader comparative implications of this research, beyond the social anthropology of South America. (1) Migrations between states and ethno-racial regimes. (2) A rentier-state and its crisis. (3) Enforcement and uses of a disputed border.
Publications

Special issues

Articles

Conference proceedings, encyclopedia articles, other publications

  • 2019 « Le palmier des marais. Remarques sur les usages d'un environnement inhabitable »,   G. Cometti, P. Le Roux, T. Manicone and N. Martin (ed.), Au seuil de la forêt. Hommage à Philippe Descola, l’anthropologue de la nature, Mirebeau-sur-Bèze, Éditions Tautem, 2019b, p. 52-64
  • 2016 « Anthropology of emotion », J. Jackson (ed.), Oxford bibliographies in anthropology, New York, Oxford University Press [online].
  • 2016 « Parenté », in Genre & sexualité: encyclopédie critique, J. Rennes (ed.), Paris, La Découverte, p. 439-448.
  • 2016 (with A.-C. Taylor), « Traitement des cadavres et mémoire des personnes en Amazonie », in Qu’est-ce qu’une sépulture? Humanité et systèmes funéraires, de la préhistoire à nos jours, M. Lauwers & A. Zemour (ed.), Actes des 36e Rencontres internationales d’histoire et d’archéologie d’Antibes, p. 55-68.
  • 2016 « Transition vers la démocratie ou instauration d’une ère d’abondance ? Les Amérindiens, la politique et la “révolution bolivarienne” au Venezuela », in Transitions historiques, P. Allard, M. Heintz & C. Muller (ed.), Nanterre, Éditions de la MAE, p. 221-233.
  • 2013 « Pueblos indígenas e identidades de género : el dualismo sexual en cuestión », Sexología y sociedad 19(1) : 64-73.