A Library of Social Science Call for Papers

Introduction: The 2011 Canadian Anthropology Society/Société canadienne anthropologie Annual Conference will be held from May 11th to 14th, 2011, at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. CASCA New Brunswick is presented as a collaboration between St. Thomas, Mount Allison and UNB. The event and check-in will begin the evening of May 10th with an Opening Reception.

Theme: The Greening of Anthropology: reconfiguring our work for the 21st Century

Despite the international upheaval of the free market economy, neo-liberalism persists, perhaps stronger than ever. Low income countries continue to suffer inequitably the effects of escalating political unrest and environmental degradation. The profitable enterprises of oil, biotechnology and war are re-framed as development and securitization while the displacement of communities, destruction of environments, and threats to health brought on by the interests of these private sectors are overseen by governments with undeclared interests of their own. Anthropologists working on the ground are uniquely poised to observe the particular resistances and accommodations of those affected by and effecting these radical and rapid social, cultural and technical changes churning around us.

The 2011 CASCA Conference calls upon anthropologists to reflect on the greening of our work and the environments we work within. Greening is meant to evoke global growth, local re-growth but also the growth of alternatives to market-based social life. Greening leads us to question changes that social, cultural, political and economic practices are undergoing. Contested paradigms matched to alternative solutions that explore arboreality or rhizomatic realizations are welcome. What new forms of materialities and sociabilities are emerging, and from what constellation of actors, both human and non-human? Which new sites of sociality and networks of socialization arise and which older forms, sites and networks change to meet new circumstances? How is anthropology positioning itself within these evolving contexts? How do moves toward engagement with these multiple domains and publics bring new relevance to anthropology beyond academia? This conference will investigate the reimagining and revitalization of anthropology across the wide range of multidimensional greenscapes in which we humans live and work in the second decade of the 21st century.

Here are some suggestions of themes to be explored within the context of CASCA 2011:

• The idea of greening posits new approaches to history, the environment, economics, politics, technologies, colonialism, neo-colonialism/postcolonialism forcing anthropologists to re-examine earlier dominant theoretical, methodological and applied practices resulting in new understandings of seemingly settled matters.
• Supra-states, nation states, failed states and transnational corporations increasingly propose or mandate the ethical “greening” of business practices, land use and appropriation of local knowledge of plants with indigenous populations within their borders and business models.
• The politico-economic production and dissemination of discourses calling for “new relationships with indigenous peoples into the future” are mobilized to elide guilt, and therefore to ignore responsibility for, oppressive colonial histories while promoting new economic opportunities expands daily in policy and the popular press. How does anthropology understand, critique and contribute to these new “collaborations” with indigenous peoples?
• How is practical/applied anthropology working with state greening policies and practices and/or helping other non-state stakeholders work with or counter those state greening practices? Are greening practices becoming just another form of business as usual?
• How do anthropologists focus on explicitly politicized realms such as new social movements, revolutionary groups and on the militarization of anthropology?
• Global health politics dealing with, for example new cancers and infectious diseases such as H1N1 or HIV/AIDs, and recurring older diseases like TB and polio, provide evolving sites of investigation for greening within the anthropologies of health, science, technology, and environment.
• Gay, lesbian and transgendered communities are affected in similar and different ways by global health politics, securitization, war and market upheavals. How are anthropologists investigating these communities’ agency?
• Ecological disasters such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico pose new challenges for anthropologists to investigate the moral and political consequences of technological disasters.
• Multiple media control the representations of all of the above issues and question. What role can anthropologists play in analyzing and mediating media not only for anthropologists but also the general public?
• How are anthropological methods being re-imagined to confront the rapidly changing world?

CASCA 2011 aims to stimulate discussions and critical reflections on the theme of greening, but so too, presentations that fall outside of the proposed theme will also be considered.

CASCA welcomes presenters and members from outside Canada.

We look forward to a welcoming you to the East Coast and to a conference that intellectually revitalizes you and feeds your spirit.

Organizing Committee: Craig Proulx, Robert Adlam, and Evie Plaice

If you have any questions or would like to receive further information, please contact the organizing committee of CASCA 2011 at fredericton2011@gmail.com.