Anthropology in London Day 2017

Tuesday 13 June 2017, 9.30am-6pm
UCL Anthropology, 14 Taviton Street, London, WC1H 0BW

Anthropology and Global Shifts

As many voices emerge to change and redefine the public sphere, and talk circulates of 'citizens of the world and nowhere', the global is becoming increasingly multiply signified. New contemporary settings engage, redefine and extend spaces for debates and knowledges of people. Ideas of locality, 'placed' and 'placeness' identities, cultural ownership, ethical dilemmas and boundaries, amidst violence, and security fears, for instance, differentially surface and compete for public attention. Anthropologists and anthropological knowledge remain crucial to contribute and intervene in these issues through ongoing and current research and the insights arising from these engagements.

The conference calls for papers which engage with a range of anthropological debates that are relevant to understanding these global shifts and swings, and where the global itself may also be an object of analysis. The call further considers how anthropological knowledge, as grounded understandings of the particular, offers insights on ways of being in the world which might rely, variously, on fixity and the small scale as well as fluidity within larger scales of movement.

This conference invites post-fieldwork students, early career researchers and established academics to consider anthropology and the global without limiting or closing the debate on locale and place. Issues of locality and 'ownership' of people resurface in contemporary settings to set or extend limits and make political mileage, for instance, in relation to Brexit-Trump led anxieties. Concurrent concerns that 'legitimise' scrutiny of persons and unexceptional acts of violence also suggest new and old ways of knowing people in and out of place.

Research papers and posters along with proposals for innovative formats are invited. These may consider, though not exclusively, field research and debates which engage with or disengage from contemporary shifts in understanding the global.

Papers may consider:

• Social movements engaging with the current global situation
• Critiques and reflections on the 'global'
• Challenges and resurgence of locality, whether in or of the global
• Anthropological knowledge debates that question and provide new understandings of locality and situatedness
• The ethical in a 'global world'
• Contemporary political changes, violence and the anthropological perspective
• Global panics and research
• Environmental challenges.

The Anthropology in London day conference is an annual event. The main purpose of the conference is to enable post-fieldwork PhD students from across London to present their fieldwork and for staff and students to discuss issues of pertinence to the discipline. The conference is free to attend and supported by the main anthropology departments in the University of London at SOAS, LSE, UCL, Brunel, Goldsmiths and UEL. The event is open to all anthropology staff and students within the University of London anthropology departments. Others wishing to participate can be considered.

Submissions

Please send submissions of no more than 300 words to Stephanie Kitchen, sk111@soas.ac.uk by 6 March 2017. Please include your full name, email address and departmental and institutional affiliation. Presenters are also encouraged to submit a suitable fieldwork photograph to be displayed electronically during the conference.