Stöd för aktivt deltagande i SANT 2018
Tack vare generöst stöd från Svenska Sällskapet för Antropologi och Geografi (SSAG) kan Masterstudenter och doktorander vid lärosäten i Sverige få ersättning för utlägg i samband med SANT 2018. Stödet avser endast aktivt deltagande, det vill säga organisation av panel och/eller presentation av paper. Ersättningsbara kostnader är inrikes resa (billigast färdsätt), boende (typ vandrarhem) och konferensavgift. SANT ersätter inte konferensmiddag eller medlemsavgift. Ersättning för utlägg söks efter konferensen, genom insänd blankett, kvitton och rapport.
SANT/FAS 2018 conference: Vulnerabilities
Swedish Anthropological Association (SANT) in partnership with the Finnish Anthropological Society (FAS).
19-21 April, Uppsala
Conference fees
Click on the link below to register to the conference and to the conference dinner on Friday evening. Don’t miss! Please send us an email to antroetno@gmail.com for any food restrictions.
Link to registration page: https://simplesignup.se/event/129415-sant-2018
When you register, please note that members of SANT are those who:
a) Have a licentiate or PhD degree or of equivalent competence in Cultural/Social Anthropology.
b) Have been accepted to a PhD program in Cultural/Social Anthropology.
c) Have been accepted to a Master program or course or have completed a Master degree in Cultural/Social Anthropology.
d) Are active as Anthropologists in Sweden and have the competence or equivalence of one of categories a-c (and through the formal approval of the SANT Board).
HOTELS AND HOSTELS I UPPSALA (PDF)
Keynote Speakers
Robert Bernasconi, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies, Pennsylvania State University. Link to Professor Bernasconi’s webpage
Abstract: “Racism, Responsibility, and Social Vulnerability”
Reference to the disproportionate impact on African Americans of the tropical cyclone Katrina is often considered sufficient to establish that race needs to be included among the factors contributing to our understanding of social vulnerability. Nevertheless, we also need to be aware of the way in which the perception of the racial dimension of social vulnerability has on occasion been used, and, it seems, is still being used, to perpetuate systemic racism. If we are to be able to give a philosophical account of how the concept of social vulnerability has an ethical purchase, we need to go beyond the merely factual level. In the second half of the paper I draw on Levinas’s account of how the concept of vulnerability embodies the idea of ethical responsibility to meet that need, but I use the argument about the operation of systemic racism developed in the first part to conclude against Levinas that his account must be located within a comprehensive political theory so as to guard against the danger that in our efforts to address our responsibilities we do not end up sustaining the status quo.
Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University. Link to Professor Das’s webpage
Abstract: “It is not that …”: Skepticism, Moral Insight, and Ordinary Realism”
I try to capture the texture of everyday life in the slums in Delhi that are steeped in a kind of quotidian violence and try to discern how moral insights are generated within this scene of corrosion. Recent critiques of the genre of realism in ethnographic writing make a rather rapid shift to such genres as that of mood or the subjunctive. I argue instead that the issue is not that of the suspension of the real but that of the contextual embedding of the real which includes within itself such registers as that of the modalities of the possible. Moral insights are not divorced from the appeal to regions of the real but we are led to ask what kind of real is at stake? Instead of the troubles of the eighties as in the crisis of representation, or in the unsayability of violence, the question for me becomes that of overwhelming, or inordinate knowledge and the imperative to absorb it in everyday forms of care.
Setha Low, Professor of Anthropology, Environmental Psychology, Geography and Women’s Studies at the Graduate Centre, City University New York (CUNY). Link to Professor Low’s webpage
Abstract: “Vulnerability, Precarity and Social Justice in Public Space”
This presentation addresses how vulnerability is structured by culture, race, class, gender, age and ability made visible in public space. I interrogate different kinds and scales of vulnerability by examining the precarity of people who rely on public space for their livelihoods—vendors in Buenos Aires, rough sleepers in Cardiff, undocumented workers on Long Island—and suggest that their “productive responses” and resistance varies by the degree of identification with a group or class. Further I examine the psychological vulnerability of middle class “fear of others” and how their productive responses through video/digital surveillance, gating, policing, down zoning, redevelopment schemes and privatization of public space increase the inability those dependent on precarious labor to survive. I illustrate this contention with examples of current threats to public space and how the built environment plays a dominant role in sustaining and exacerbating inequalities in productive responses to vulnerability advocating an engaged anthropology approach to this dilemma.
Conference abstract/call
Vulnerability is a structuring feature of human existence; one that is lived and understood in historically shifting conditions. Today, global displacement, politico-military polarisations, and recurring environmental and humanitarian crises importantly shape the experience, distribution and interpretation of vulnerability.
Traditional engagements with vulnerability have portrayed it as a position or a state of helplessness, silence, disempowerment and lack. Anthropology has a long history of documenting vulnerability in this regard. Together with activists and humanitarians, anthropologists have worked to “give voice” to vulnerable people, thereby drawing attention to perspectives and lives that otherwise may have escaped notice or attention. SANT/FAS 2018 welcomes panels and papers that build on this solid academic legacy of engaging with vulnerability.
The conference also invites research that approaches vulnerability as something more than a condition from which subjects should be defended, rescued or liberated. SANT/FAS 2018 encourages participants to explore vulnerability as a productive position or condition that does something. Vulnerability makes demands for accountability and responsibility. Focusing on the productive dimensions of vulnerability can also change the focus of research, awareness and engagement. SANT/FAS 2018 encourages participants to ask:
What does vulnerability mean?
How is vulnerability experienced and positioned?
How is vulnerability manifested in everything from architecture to interactional practices?
How can vulnerability be thought about in ways that do not disavow it or just wish it away?
Local hosts
- Department of Cultural Anthropology & Ethnology, Uppsala University
- Engaging Vulnerability, Uppsala University
SANT/FAS 2018 konferens: sårbarheter
Sveriges antropologförbund (SANT) i samarbete med Suomen Antropologinen Seura/Finnish Anthropological Society (FAS)
19-21 April, Uppsala
Konferensavgifter
Klicka på länken nedan för att registrera dig på konferensen samt konferensmiddagen på fredagskvällen. Vänligen meddela os via e-post om du har kostrestriktioner: antroetno@gmail.com
Länk till registreringssidan: https://simplesignup.se/event/129415-sant-2018
HOTELL OCH VANDRARHEM I UPPSALA (PDF)
Plenarföreläsare
Robert Bernasconi, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies, Pennsylvania State University. Link to Professor Bernasconi’s webpage
Abstract: “Racism, Responsibility, and Social Vulnerability”
Reference to the disproportionate impact on African Americans of the tropical cyclone Katrina is often considered sufficient to establish that race needs to be included among the factors contributing to our understanding of social vulnerability. Nevertheless, we also need to be aware of the way in which the perception of the racial dimension of social vulnerability has on occasion been used, and, it seems, is still being used, to perpetuate systemic racism. If we are to be able to give a philosophical account of how the concept of social vulnerability has an ethical purchase, we need to go beyond the merely factual level. In the second half of the paper I draw on Levinas’s account of how the concept of vulnerability embodies the idea of ethical responsibility to meet that need, but I use the argument about the operation of systemic racism developed in the first part to conclude against Levinas that his account must be located within a comprehensive political theory so as to guard against the danger that in our efforts to address our responsibilities we do not end up sustaining the status quo.
Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University. Link to Professor Das’s webpage
Abstract: “It is not that …”: Skepticism, Moral Insight, and Ordinary Realism”
I try to capture the texture of everyday life in the slums in Delhi that are steeped in a kind of quotidian violence and try to discern how moral insights are generated within this scene of corrosion. Recent critiques of the genre of realism in ethnographic writing make a rather rapid shift to such genres as that of mood or the subjunctive. I argue instead that the issue is not that of the suspension of the real but that of the contextual embedding of the real which includes within itself such registers as that of the modalities of the possible. Moral insights are not divorced from the appeal to regions of the real but we are led to ask what kind of real is at stake? Instead of the troubles of the eighties as in the crisis of representation, or in the unsayability of violence, the question for me becomes that of overwhelming, or inordinate knowledge and the imperative to absorb it in everyday forms of care.
Setha Low, Professor of Anthropology, Environmental Psychology, Geography and Women’s Studies at the Graduate Centre, City University New York (CUNY). Link to Professor Low’s webpage
Abstract: “Vulnerability, Precarity and Social Justice in Public Space”
This presentation addresses how vulnerability is structured by culture, race, class, gender, age and ability made visible in public space. I interrogate different kinds and scales of vulnerability by examining the precarity of people who rely on public space for their livelihoods—vendors in Buenos Aires, rough sleepers in Cardiff, undocumented workers on Long Island—and suggest that their “productive responses” and resistance varies by the degree of identification with a group or class. Further I examine the psychological vulnerability of middle class “fear of others” and how their productive responses through video/digital surveillance, gating, policing, down zoning, redevelopment schemes and privatization of public space increase the inability those dependent on precarious labor to survive. I illustrate this contention with examples of current threats to public space and how the built environment plays a dominant role in sustaining and exacerbating inequalities in productive responses to vulnerability advocating an engaged anthropology approach to this dilemma.
Tema: sårbarheter
Sårbarhet formar all mänsklig existens. Hur sårbarhet upplevs och förstås beror på sammanhang och historiska omständigheter. Dagens globala migrationsflöden och politiska och militära polarisering, vid sidan av miljökriser och återkommande humanitära katastrofer, påverkar upplevelsen och fördelningen av mänsklig sårbarhet.
Traditionellt har sårbarhet undersökts som ett tillstånd av hjälplöshet, tystnad, maktlöshet och otillräcklighet. Antropologin har en lång historia av att dokumentera sårbarhet på detta sätt. Tillsammans med aktivister och filantroper har antropologer verkat för att ”ge röst” åt utsatta människor och belysa livsöden och perspektiv som annars lätt förbises. SANT/FAS 2018 välkomnar paneler och konferensbidrag som bygger vidare på akademins historiskt starka engagemang i sårbarhetsfrågor.
Konferensen bjuder även in forskning som undersöker sårbarhet som något mer än ett tillstånd från vilket människor bör försvaras, räddas eller befrias. SANT/FAS 2018 uppmuntrar deltagare att utforska sårbarhet som ett produktivt tillstånd som gör något. Sårbarhet ställer krav på ansvar och ansvarighet. Genom att undersöka de produktiva dimensionerna av sårbarhet kan forskningens fokus förändras och öppna upp nya vägar för forskare och allmänhet att förstå och leva med sårbarhet. SANT/FAS 2018 uppmuntrar därför konferensdeltagare att reflektera över följande frågor:
Vad betyder sårbarhet?
Hur upplevs sårbarheter och hur är de positionerade?
Vilka uttryck tar sig sårbarhet, i allt från arkitektur till social interaktion?
Hur kan vi tänka kring sårbarhet utan att förkasta eller sörja dess existens?