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We are putting the program together now. Please send us your
proposal as soon as possible via email.
Annual Meeting of the AMERICAN ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Atlanta, Georgia -- April 22-25, 2004
Conference theme: CRISES
Crisis a: the turning point for better or worse; b: an unstable or
crucial time or state of affairs whose outcome will make a decisive difference for better or worse; c: the period when forced liquidation occurs.
In the U.S. and elsewhere, people are currently expressing a heightened
sense of crisis. The anxiety is sometimes reflected in the view that
irrational external forces have turned against ordered political,
economic, cultural and moral landscapes. What are the multiple readings
of crisis and its outcomes in the many settings, societies, and
historical periods studied by anthropologists and other scholars? How is
crisis represented in the various genres and media of discourse? What
does an ethnological framework offer in the way of conceptualizations,
definitions, descriptions and analyses of crisis and its experiences,
expressions and manifestations?
The 2004 meeting of the American Ethnological Society welcomes abstracts
for individual papers, panels, and media presentations focused on the
theme of crisis. This concentration on the theme of crisis makes it
possible to redefine "crisis" by extending the concept of crisis to all
domains of social and personal existence, including (but not limited to)
Politics, Language, Nature, Culture, Geographical Entities and
Boundaries (regions, cities, nations, villages, communities), Resources,
Race, Academic Disciplines, Activism, Disease, Social Movements, Money
and Markets, Problems of Categorization, Body, Mind, and Spirit, Media,
Regulatory Systems, Intervention, Gender, Transformation, Trauma,
Emotion, Human Rights, Belief.
Ways to consider crisis and its relevance for ethnology could include:
- How do moments of crisis throw light on existing social and cultural
hierarchies or create new hierarchies?
- Who is vulnerable to who is protected from crisis?
- Histories of crisis that include issues of memory, genealogy and time.
- Crisis as natural, as invented, as cultural, as moral, as
technological.
- War and militarism as crises.
- Conflicts over land and natural resources.
- Health and environmental crises.
- Crises of boundaries.
- Crisis in knowledge production within or across anthropology and other
disciplines; crises in fieldwork, in representation, and being
represented
- Predicting and responding to crisis.
- Language and rhetoric in the construction and experience of crisis.
- The audiences for crisis.
Please submit your proposal ASAP (deadline for all submissions is
January 2004). We invite the submission of proposals for panels,
roundtables, poster sessions, and film and video screenings, as well as
individual papers. We especially encourage panels co-sponsored by other
AAA sections.
Please include the following: title, abstract of no more than 100 words,
name, e-mail address and mailing address. Submissions can be emailed to
conference organizer Gertrude Fraser.
The American Ethnological Society, founded in 1842, is the oldest
professional organization for anthropologists in the United States. With
a membership of nearly 4,000, it remains the leading forum in the
Western Hemisphere for advancing the knowledge base of anthropology and
promoting innovation through critical discussions of theories, methods,
and research practices.
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