17th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and
Ethnological Sciences
Manchester (UK), 5-10 August 2013
*Mobile cultures, cultural (im)mobilities*
Panel organizer: Noel B. Salazar (University of Leuven, Belgium):
noel.salazar@soc.kuleuven.be <mailto:noel.salazar@soc.kuleuven.be>
Panel abstract:
Although humans have always been on the move, discourses of
globalization and metaphors of 'flow' have conjured up images of
unfettered movement. Partly influenced by neoliberal and free market
ideologies, transnational mobility has become one of the most powerful
stratifying factors, leading to a global hierarchy of movements.
Purposeful border-crossing mobilities, usually of the temporary kind,
are widely accepted as a desirable and even normative path (e.g. rites
of passage) towards success: career achievement through educational
exchange and work experience abroad, and wellbeing or quality of life
achievement through international tourism and lifestyle migration.
Across the globe, such forms of geographical movement are made
meaningful by being variously linked with the accumulation of economic
(resources), social (status) or cultural (cosmopolitanism) capital.As
more people cross borders, nation-states attempt to maintain authority
over the meaning of their movements. An all too exclusive focus on the
most mobile people alone conceals the wider effects that dominant
ideas of (im)mobility and transnational networks have on societies and
their cultural fabric as a whole. The papers in this panel will
ethnographically address the following questions: How is
achievement-through-mobility ideologically constituted across cultures
and which mechanisms and institutional regimes ensure its transmission
and self-perpetuation? How do people experience, understand and
negotiate positively valued transnational mobilities? How much are
people aware of the ways that culture influences boundary-crossing
mobility patterns? And, turning the question around, what is the role
of transnational mobilities in the constitution of culture(s) and
cultural heritage?
Submission of abstracts:
Please send an e-mail to the panel organizer with the following data:
title and 150 word paper abstract, name, affiliation and full contact
details
Deadline: 22 July 2011
General information on the conference:
http://www.iuaes2013.org/
