Anthropology Conferences

Anthropology and the Ends of Worlds Symposium

Call for Papers

A Symposium, Thursday 25th and Friday 26th March, 2010

Hosted by the Department of Anthropology
School of Social and Political Sciences
University of Sydney

What is entailed in casting a specifically anthropological light on the ends of worlds, and how might anthropology itself be changed in the process?

Ethnographic fieldwork is often conducted at “worlds’ ends,” or in social worlds whose negative transformations are experienced as endings. Among the world’s comparatively wealthy and culturally dominant the fear that everything is coming to an end sits shoulder to shoulder with security, comfort and optimism. Technological advances and post-industrial affluence coexist with apathy, denial and indifference, as well as anxieties about danger, loss, risk and looming catastrophe.

Anthropology has long contributed to differentiated and pluralised understandings of cosmologies of destruction and renewal. These eschatologies - such as Apocalypse, Kali Yuga, Doomsday, or Mesoamerican calendars – also operate as visions of transcendence. How do end-time doctrines, myths and prophecies articulate with the domain of scientific rationality? How are they caught up in other dimensions of the “global process” such as economic and ecological interdependence? Are there signs of converging demands for a world process that reveals itself as having a purpose, a good “end” to which it must be directed – lest it “really, finally, end”? How is cultural anthropology situated in relation to this persistent quest for a human telos and the prospect of world endings?

We invite proposals for papers that tackle the problematic of Anthropology and the Ends of Worlds. Within this broad theme papers might draw on such empirical areas as the lived experience of economic crisis; environmental destruction; religious mutations; new political formations; postcolonialism; or the loss of vernacular languages.

The keynote speaker for the symposium is Professor Michael Taussig, from the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York. The symposium is envisaged as a conversational and intellectual exchange among participants and it is envisaged that interest groups may be formed around particular topics with short pre-circulated papers before the symposium where possible. We hope to include as many papers as possible, but there may be selection of abstracts according to topics that emerge and space availability. Abstracts are requested by Friday 18th December 2009.

Further details about the Symposium venue, presentation format, and registration will be circulated shortly.

Abstracts should be submitted to:
Katarina Ferro


Convenors:
Professor Linda Connor
Dr. Sebastian Job

2009 AAS Annual Conference

The 2009 Australian Anthropological Society Annual Conference will be hosted by Macquarie University, Sydney. The theme is The Politics and Ethics of Engagement. It will begin with a keynote address by Professor Arjun Appadurai of New York University on the evening of 9 December.

December 10 and 11 will comprise the various panels with one plenary session on each day.

The conference dinner and and AAS Annual General Meeting will be held on the evening of TBC.

The Heads of Departments will be held on TBC and the conference will conclude at 4.00 PM on December 11.

For further information, go to the AAS website, www.aas.asn.au