Nostos Salon 01
A monthly gathering of good food, drinks, and conversation—where anthropology meets community in an engaging, accessible way.
Rites of Passage with David Boarder Giles
Our first Nostos gathering at Cams Kiosk explored the theme of Rites of Passage and Rituals in Everyday Life — a fitting beginning for a series dedicated to reconnection, reflection, and meaning-making.
We were joined by Dr David Boarder Giles, who shared a deeply resonant talk on how moments of upheaval and instability in the world often open up liminal spaces, thresholds between what was and what is yet to come. Drawing on the work of Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, David reflected on the idea that when the old world is dying and the new one struggles to be born, “a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”. These “monsters” as Gramsci might understand them are the narcissistic and fascist forces that rise in moments of uncertainty and they can remind us of how fragile our social worlds can be.
David also turned his attention to the word Nostos itself — a term that evokes both homecoming and nostalgia, a longing for what once was, or what we imagine once was. Drawing on works such as Time of Monsters by Andrea Muehlebach and The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym, he invited us to consider how nostalgia can shape our collective imagination. In times of instability, nostalgia can fuel a yearning for a lost national identity, one that may never have truly existed. But Nostos, he suggested, can also be reclaimed as something more expansive and creative: a return not to a fixed past, but to the feeling of belonging and possibility itself.
The conversation became an invitation to hold this tension between nostalgia and transformation — to ask how we might look back with tenderness while imagining forward with courage.
As discussion unfolded, participants reflected on the rituals that shape their own lives, the small, grounding acts that help us navigate change, loss, and renewal. From morning walks and creative practices to seasonal celebrations and family traditions, these everyday rites reminded us that meaning is something we continually make together.
As our first gathering, the day carried its own quiet sense of ceremony, the beginning of a shared space for community, curiosity, and care. Many attendees spoke to the comfort of finding an anthropological language to name the felt but often unspoken significance of the everyday.
It was a warm and generative beginning for Nostos: a return to meaning that also gestures toward new ways of being at home in the world.
Longer Reads
‘A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People: Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities’ by David Boarder Giles
Podcasts
Rites of Passage with Arne Rubinstein (The New Orchid)
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
― Antonio Gramsci