Gili Hammer √ (Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)

The Intersensory Nature of Inclusiveness: Crip Utopian Politics in Contested Times and Places

This presentation explores social inclusion through a sensory lens, focusing on the tensions and successes of utopian crip politics, particularly when intersensory experiences are negotiated. Drawing from a decade of anthropological fieldwork with disability-inclusive dance and theatre projects, I examine how these collaborations navigate body-mind diversity and foster socio-political change. Specifically, I will present examples from disability performances staged during moments of conflict in the contested and intercultural cities of Jaffa and Jerusalem. These performances serve as spaces where artists with and without disabilities and with different sensory modes of communication collaborate across religious, national, and bodily divides.

By investigating the potential and limitations of these performances, I ask whether the performing arts, together with the anthropology of the senses, can create a framework for "crip utopian politics"—a vision of inclusion that transcends traditional socio-political boundaries. This approach highlights how sensory and embodied practices in the performing arts can be powerful tools for negotiating inclusion, fostering understanding, and challenging the constraints imposed by contested places and times.

Keywords: senses; disability; inter; inclusion; diversity; Israel; conflict; blindness; deaf; performance

Anna van den Bos (Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University; Netherlands)

A Case for Thinking within a Neurodiversity Paradigm: Divergent Ethnography on Neurodivergent University Students Use of Noise-cancelling Headphones

Until recently, research on neurodivergent sensory experience has been largely ignored in anthropology and wider academia. This paper presents my ethnography on Neurodivergent students’ use of noise-cancelling (NC) technology in the university context. It examines the experiences of ‘being-Neurodivergent-in-the-world’ and challenges hegemonic conceptualisations of the senses, previously used to pathologize neurodivergent sensory experience, thus this presentation contributes to ‘critical disability studies and the senses’. 

Through drawing on my divergent ethnography (conducted in 2024) and lived experience as a Neurodivergent student and researcher, I will articulate the everyday experiences of the Neurodivergent students and their sound practises, used to manage sensorial sensitivities. Using the insights gathered on how Neurodivergent students manage university environments through NC technology, which is used as a controllable interface to manage sensory experience, I will demonstrate the wide spectrum of aural and sensorial diversities, rather than generalisabilities. The impact of the neoliberal academic environment, felt by Neurodivergent university students, will be additionally discussed, as this is reflected and embodied in practices for managing neurodivergent sensory experience.

This presentation demonstrates the necessity of thinking within a neurodivergence paradigm in the field of sensory anthropology and wider academia.

Keywords: Neurodivergent anthropology, neurodivergent sensory experience