Anthropology and the Ends of Worlds Symposium

Call for Papers

Thursday 25th and Friday 26th March 2010

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

Convenors:
Professor Linda Connor
Dr. Sebastian Job

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

Anthropology has long contributed to differentiated and pluralised understandings of cosmologies of destruction and renewal.

How do end-time doctrines, myths and prophecies articulate with the domain of scientific rationality?

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.

Abstracts are requested by Friday 18th December 2009.

Further details about the symposium themes, keynote speaker, venue, presentation format, and registration can be found here.