The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, 3-4 July 2012
"Culture?" Anthropological Perspectives
"Culture?" is the theme of the 40th Meeting of the Israeli Anthropological
Association. Over the past few decades, the use of culture as a main
theoretical concept in anthropology is no longer self-evident. Concepts
like "ontology" compete with it within anthropology. At the same time, it
has become a key term across multiple public and academic discussions on,
for example, "multi-cultural society", "culture wars", "cultural
proficiency", "high/low/popular culture", "digital culture," "cultural
heritage", and "cultural logics". In the 2012 Meeting of the Israeli
Anthropological Association, we seek to navigate between discussions about
culture as an apparently necessary theoretical construct in anthropology
and between culture as a social construct with popular, political,
academic and professional uses. We want to discuss how and to what degree
(or if at all) culture, as a term and a concept, can serve current
anthropology, and the anthropology of the contemporary emergent world. How
in particular has this concept served anthropology in Israel and
anthropology of Israel, and in what ways (or whether) it can do so in the
future. We want to ethnographically investigate its growing uses in the
public arena and in neighboring disciplines, asking who uses this term,
how, when and what for, and how is culture reified, objectified and
marketed in the process. We want to reflect on how (and whether) the
notion of culture has become a social fact for the public, while
anthropologists continue to debate its meaning and utility and consider
ways to qualify the term.
The Israeli Anthropological Association invites proposals for sessions --
and, in special cases, for single presentations* -- that engage with the
theme "Culture?" from anthropological perspectives, on the basis of
ethnographic research. We invite debate on the place, usages, meanings,
inventions, changes and politics of "culture" in the contemporary world,
in diverse anthropological research-fields, in applied anthropology, and
in the interfaces between cultural anthropology, other branches of
anthropology, other academic disciplines, and public discourse.
Please see further information in the Association's website
<http://www.isranthro.org/>www.isranthro.org
