antropologi.info calendar

New Delhi, India, May 9-10, 2008

This conference seeks to bring together scholars working across areas such as sociology, gender studies, film/media studies, anthropology, popular culture, and urban studies in order to explore emerging cultures of intimacy and friendship in contemporary non-Western contexts.

We are particularly interested in perspectives that relate the topic to the making of social selves at a time great economic and cultural change in many Asian societies. Socially, ‘non-Western’ has often been considered synonymous with traditional, conservative, static and illiberal, particularly in contexts of intimate/personal relationships that are expected to conform to certain values, norms and expectations of heritage.

However, following modernity at large and specific influxes of change like economic liberalization, globalization and the worldwide web, there is, increasingly, a perception (if not a belief) that social structures and networks have been affected, and “new” cultures of intimacy and togetherness are emergent (if not already established). There is a decided conviction that such new structures and networks are visible in day-to-day contexts at work, home and leisure, and that they reflect political, cultural, emotional and intellectual transitions and upheavals.

At this conference, we would like to explore this notion of emergent cultures of “new” intimacies and togetherness in the contemporary non-Western world, in as varied a social and cultural register as possible.

Inquiries and expressions of interest to: intimaciesconference (AT) yahoo.com

Brinda Bose, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, India
Sanjay Srivastava, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

23. februar - 12. maj 2008, København

Charlotte Haslund-Christensen tager udgangspunkt i den vestlige opdagelsesrejsendes blik på “den anden", men vender objektivet mod os selv: danskerne. Udstillingen er en fotografisk installation af de indfødte.

Mer informasjon

23.-25. mai 2008, Oslo

Tema for Norsk antropologisk forenings årskonferanse 2008 er “Forestillinger om fellesskap". Konferanselokalet vil være Georg Sverdrups hus (Universitetsbiblioteket) UiO.

kilde: http://antropologi.org/?mid=108&o=-5&n=244

3 - 5 July 2008, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany

The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department II, invites participants to a conference from the 3 – 5 July 2008 at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany, to discuss and develop anthropological approaches to the study of social
support.

Ethnographic accounts of life under state socialism offer an instructive case of human ingenuity in the face of pervasive shortage. The ‘supplier state’ that sought to monopolise channels of support in many cases failed to do so thereby facilitating the role of personal networks of support. In fact, the latter came to permeate the state to such a degree that it became a resource in itself, to be distributed through these networks.

Yet the supplier state also provided a sense of stability and security, of guaranteed, however insufficient, supplies. For the last two decades, whether in Eastern Europe, China or Vietnam, many have painfully experienced the erosion of this basic sense of being looked after ‘from cradle to grave’.

Today, the welfare states of late industrial nations in Europe and North America are also undergoing far-reaching reforms. There, high levels of unemployment, ageing populations and cuts in social benefits also erode a sense of stability and security. To what extent is the market here an alternative to personal networks? Clearly, one can observe the “commoditisation of support”, as part of an ever expanding service economy.

This is not limited to Europe and North America but can also be seen elsewhere. As a consequence, in many parts of the world the social gap between those who can afford ‘support for money’ and those who cannot is widening.

As anthropologists, we are interested in people’s inventiveness in organising support and the meanings they afford these practices. What can we learn from places where there is no welfare state? How are notions and moral concepts of support acted out in daily life? What kinds of sources and resources of support are mobilised? Support can mean a state providing for child care or old age, but also a friend offering words of consolation, relatives lending money, a citizen donating blood, a deity protecting a village or a group of elderly offering sociability. Is support always necessarily serious business?

Can support not be organised through play? Local notions and modalities of support will also reflect and shape ideas of the person and its efficacy. The ideal of individual self-reliance in the West is but one example.

Social support has received attention mainly from sociologists and psychologists, especially in health studies and social network analyses. In anthropology, it has featured only marginally and tended to be conceptualised as simply a form of transaction. It is one major aim of this conference to examine and account for the continuities and discontinuities between support and other kinds of transactions.

As a broad frame for our anthropological enquiry into support, we suggest three terms: paternalism, mutuality and charity. Our first term, ‘paternalism’, makes reference to top-down systems of support, be it a bureaucratic welfare state or a locally operating racketeering group. Apart from paternalism, we suggest ‘mutuality’, where support occurs within less or not hierarchically structured relationships. Finally, ‘charity’ is intended to capture those forms of support that are locally considered ‘interest-free’.

The issue of support often arises in the context of dramatic life events. Anthropological studies of life histories, social memory and temporality promise to be one important field here. But legal anthropology, as for instance Keebet and Franz von Benda-Beckmann have shown, can also be a productive perspective on social support. And of course the discipline’s long-standing interest in gift exchange seems essential for any study of the giving and receiving of support. These three domains of inquiry in anthropology are not meant to be exhaustive.

Contact: Markus Schlecker, e-mail: schlecker (at) eth.mpg.de
Friederike Fleischer, e-mail: fleischer (at) eth.mpg.de

http://www.eth.mpg.de/

8-11 July 2008, University of Manchester

The European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (ECMSAS) is the largest gathering of South Asia oriented researchers in Europe, covering all fields from the humanities and social sciences to technology, natural sciences and medicine.

http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/ecmsas/

26th to 30th August in Ljubljana, Slovenia

The main aim of the conference is to deal with public discourse on diversity, cross cultural communication and at the same time the lack of discussion about underestimated aspects of mutuality, including the post colonial, post imperial, post socialist, and post racial issues. Until now, anthropologists have not considered mutuality a significant concept in understanding diversity. The conference will attempt to explore different ethnographic instances of mutuality, especially those of mutual borrowing of practices and beliefs, for example processes of religious and cultural syncretism, creolization or acculturation, related to imperialism, colonialism or modern cultural flow, etc., mutual trust or mutual recognition.

More information: http://www.easa2008.eu/