2003 SANA/CASCA Conference Call for Papers

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
May 8 to 11, 2003

ON EDGE: ANTHROPOLOGY IN TROUBLING TIMES

Anthropologists have long positioned themselves in sites of social change
and struggle, often in relation to imperial projects. Today, many
anthropologists are on edge. We have difficult choices to confront in the
face of shifting power relations and competing claims about globalization,
the market, rights (including indigenous and property rights), identities,
histories, the environment and technologies. As we write historically
specific social subjects into these often subjectless discourses,
anthropologists also contend with the changing dynamics of field sites.

Some ways of thinking of the concept of edge, include:
- geopolitical edges, boundaries, borders, unions and allegiances;
- political edges, zones of confrontation;
- social and cultural edges, their inscription, their transgression;
- temporal edges, the turning of centuries, dissonant meanings of time;
- technological edges, new technologies, bio-technologies;
- geographic and spatial edges, natural and man-made;
- theoretical edges, the crossing of disciplines and sub-disciplines,
national traditions, the meeting of theories.
Being on edge might also refer to:
- sites of contestation;
- moments of innovation;
- places on the margin or on the cusp;
- tensions and conflicts in our research sites;
- our roles as researchers and public intellectuals, research ethics;
- ways marginal places, people and agenda may become central, and the
reverse;
- how shifting edges have led to the reworking of paradigms and puzzles;
- our praxis from social, regional and national locations as anthropologists
trying to intercede in debates about pressing issues in troubling times.

We invite the submission of proposals for panels, roundtables, poster
sessions, film and video screenings, and other forms of presentation on
these or other topics. Please include the following: title, abstract of no
more than 100 words, name, e-mail address and mailing address. The deadline
for submissions is Monday September 30, 2002. Forms and guidelines for
submissions will be forthcoming shortly. A website for the conference, not
yet in operation, will be linked to the official SANA website at:
http://faculty.kutztown.edu/ehrensal/sana.html

For further information:
Contact Vincent Lyon-Callo
Email: vincent.lyon-callo@wmich.edu
Phone: (616) 387-3964
Address: Department of Anthropology
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008