Boni
Homo comfort
Stefano Boni
To question comfort, identifying its mostly disregarded or silenced side effects, is something that shakes the foundations of what we consider our indispensable sensorial wellbeing. This questioning allows us to understand not just what we've gained but also what we have irremediably lost.
Everybody likes a comforting life, but is precisely this general and uncritical acceptance that should be investigated in order to understand the historical changes induced by an overpowering hyper-technology. Having arrogantly entered our daily routine, comfort has not just become a lifestyle but also a way of knowing that has moulded material culture, cognitive processes and the systems of evaluation themselves. Comfort takes the form of a totally social affair that allows us to inquire into the anthropological caesura that has given birth – at least in the western and westernised world – to an unprecedented type of humanity: Homo comfort. A humanity on the way of overcoming fatigue and pain, who at the same time however accepts an existential illness evermore widespread and the loss of sensual and cognitive abilities that were crafted over the course of centuries. This is a loss tht makes humanity more and more dependant on an omnipresent technology of which humans have little or no awareness.
Stefano Boni obtained his PhD in anthropology at Oxford and has carried out field-researches firth in Ghana, then in Venezuela and Italy. He is presently teaching cultural anthropology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He's the author of numerous essays, among which Le strutture della disegualianza [The Structures of Inequality] (2003), Allineamento Istituzionale [Institutional alignment] (2013) Technologically-propelled comfort. Some theoretical implications of the contemporary overcoming of fatigue (2015) Poder Popular in socialist Venezuela in the XXI century (2017), he has also published with elèuthera Vivere senza padroni, antropologia della sovversione quotidiana [To live with no Master, an Anthropology of daily subversion] (2006) and Culture e poteri, un approccio antropologico [ Cultures and Powers, an anthropological approach] (2011).
Stefano Boni
To question comfort, identifying its mostly disregarded or silenced side effects, is something that shakes the foundations of what we consider our indispensable sensorial wellbeing. This questioning allows us to understand not just what we've gained but also what we have irremediably lost.
Everybody likes a comforting life, but is precisely this general and uncritical acceptance that should be investigated in order to understand the historical changes induced by an overpowering hyper-technology. Having arrogantly entered our daily routine, comfort has not just become a lifestyle but also a way of knowing that has moulded material culture, cognitive processes and the systems of evaluation themselves. Comfort takes the form of a totally social affair that allows us to inquire into the anthropological caesura that has given birth – at least in the western and westernised world – to an unprecedented type of humanity: Homo comfort. A humanity on the way of overcoming fatigue and pain, who at the same time however accepts an existential illness evermore widespread and the loss of sensual and cognitive abilities that were crafted over the course of centuries. This is a loss tht makes humanity more and more dependant on an omnipresent technology of which humans have little or no awareness.
Stefano Boni obtained his PhD in anthropology at Oxford and has carried out field-researches firth in Ghana, then in Venezuela and Italy. He is presently teaching cultural anthropology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He's the author of numerous essays, among which Le strutture della disegualianza [The Structures of Inequality] (2003), Allineamento Istituzionale [Institutional alignment] (2013) Technologically-propelled comfort. Some theoretical implications of the contemporary overcoming of fatigue (2015) Poder Popular in socialist Venezuela in the XXI century (2017), he has also published with elèuthera Vivere senza padroni, antropologia della sovversione quotidiana [To live with no Master, an Anthropology of daily subversion] (2006) and Culture e poteri, un approccio antropologico [ Cultures and Powers, an anthropological approach] (2011).
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