Irene Pochetti

Irène Pochetti is a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on the Transformation of Educational and Social Practices (LIRTES EA 7313 UPEC), (since 2018). Currently on CNRS delegation at CEMCA, Mexico since September 2024.

The project

Title: From the neighborhood to the desert. Between spirituality and a return to nature, trajectories and experiences of popular youth in Mexico. San Luis Potosí.

"This project explores the spiritual and healing practices of young people and adults from working-class neighborhoods in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, who were previously part of urban gangs. It focuses on the study of desert ceremonies inspired by Wixarica (or Huichol) culture, an indigenous people from the Sierra Madre.

The goal is to understand how these experiences, outside the urban context, relate to discourses of "returning to origins." What trajectories lead individuals to find meaning in a return to nature? How do they appropriate and reproduce these so-called ancestral practices? What continuities and ruptures emerge between these rituals and the various forms of spirituality and religiosity rooted in working-class neighborhoods? Finally, to what extent do these explorations shape new subjectivities in a context marked by inequality and violence?

This project combines ethnography, photography, and the active participation of those involved in these ceremonies. It aims to lead to the publication of a book that will document this dialogue, as well as the creation of a traveling exhibition, co-constructed with the participants through workshops for reflection and creation."

Institution: EHESS

Selected Publications:

• Tirar Barrio - Afterword of the photographic work Hecho en barrio on the working-class neighborhoods of San Luis Potosí, by photographer Jean Felix Fayolle, to be published in December by Révélateur Editions, 2022.
• Derechos de la infancia y género en México: Imbricaciones paradojales en el marco del Estado neoliberal, Cuadernos de antropología social "La administración de la infancia y la adolescencia hoy. Etnografiando acciones estatales orientadas a la protección y vigilancia de niñas, niños y adolescentes", dossier coordinated by Julieta Grinberg and Florencia Graziano, N°53, 2021.
• Enfances, derechos et políticas. Introduction, Problèmes d’Amérique latine N°108, Spring 2018.
• Care Under constraint: Street Children in rehabilitation Centre in Tijuana (Mexico), Growing up outside families: cultures, religion, and politics in independent children’s process of identity formation, Antropologia Vol. 4, Issue 2, 2017.