«Re-viewing the field: Contemporary debates and approaches to fieldwork»
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: MARCH 20, 2020
The birth of modern anthropology is concomitant with the invention of "the field". Since Malinowski, long-term presence in a place that is not home has been, and is still in many ways, the paradigmatic ethnographic method. With the passage of time, the discipline has evolved to include new themes and approaches, and yet the field remains its epistemological and methodological anchoring point. It is time to take stock of the debates around the meaning and localization of the field that have been shaping the discipline for a number of decades. We have in mind the now frequent reference to "multi-sited ethnography", or the largely discredited use of the distinction between anthropology "abroad" and "at home", well problematized in last years' annual meeting on "The Global as Method". In practice, contemporary anthropologists avail themselves of a wide spectrum of tools, methods and concepts for going about their empirical work, raising questions about the limits and the specificities of the discipline.
Particularly with the rise of life "on-line", anthropologists have been inventing new forms of fieldwork to capture and analyze these new forms of social interaction. With the rise of the Internet 2.0, notions such as "virtual fields", "social networks", "forums", "platforms", and so forth are increasingly invoked as both objects and methods of inquiry. These new "fields" are characterized by their lack of geographic situatedness and by the fact that social interactions most often take place between people who do not "know" each other "in person".
Simultaneous to this "virtualization" of the field, we are also witness to what appears to be a countervailing movement in globalized societies the intensification of logics of heritage and of what are roughly termed "identity politics", which celebrate specific cultural elements, often linked to a territorially rooted sense of belonging. These logics of "re-rooting" raise new challenges for anthropological theory, traditionally critical of simplistic equations between communities, cultures and territories. Indeed, anthropologists are often solicited directly to participate in these social activities, and must ask themselves new questions about how they wish to position themselves as researchers and as social actors when their data are co-produced with the people they study, when their status and objectives must be negotiated with local actors, and when restitution of research results becomes increasingly mandatory. With the concept of "situated knowledge", feminist and post-colonial thinkers have thoroughly discredited the notion of scientific neutrality, the "view from nowhere". It is now taken for granted that anthropologists must assume responsibility for their positionnality, but the forms of these engagements are hotly debated, and challenge the very idea of "the field" - its composition, its boundaries, the relations it creates amongst actors, in sum, its agency as a social actor in its own right.
This Call for Panels welcomes propositions that examine these new fieldwork configurations. Our hope is to stimulate reflection on the convergences, alliances and conflicts produced by these new temporalites and spatialites of "the field", in resonance with other disciplines from which anthropologists can borrow productively and to which they contribute. Defining "the field" calls for a multitude of approaches, which are not merely theoretical or epistemological, but also ethical and political.
Applicants are invited to submit panel proposals with a list of potential speakers (from 3-6 speakers per panel). Panel proposals will be evaluated by the local organizing committee. Selected panels will receive a budget that covers the costs of travel, room and board (two nights) for one speaker from outside of Switzerland, and room and board for Swiss participants (two nights). Organizers are free to seek extra funding if they wish to invite speakers from overseas. To propose a panel, please fill out the electronic form (see link below). Please address any questions to andrea.jacot@gmail.com. Panel organizers will be notified by late March if their panels have been accepted. They should then send out a call for papers for their respective panels. Paper abstracts are due on May 15th. Panel organizers are responsible for selecting those papers they accept, in coordination with the local organizing committee (for reasons of budgeting). All decisions about participants should be taken by early June.
Link for panel submissions:
https://forms.gle/AtNmLqJeDwpCfyf6A
Deadline for submissions March 20, 2020