5th Annual McGill Anthropology Graduate Students' Conference - Setting anthropology in motion: 'Movement' in the contemporary world -McGill University - March, 2013

5th Annual McGill Anthropology Graduate Students' Conference
Setting anthropology in motion: 'Movement' in the contemporary world
McGill University

Friday, March 22, 2013

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Peter Locke
Lecturer in Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton University
We begin with a truism: the world is changing. Increasingly,
anthropologists must engage
with 'movement' in many aspects of their work. The vectors of
'movement,' however, can be
understood both in terms of the actual objects or phenomena under
study, and as adjustments in
how we approach and conceptualize anthropological research. Our goal
is to provide a space to
collectively 'workshop' the idea of 'movement.'
Instances of 'movement' can be identified in shifts towards
non-governmental initiatives
to effect change; people slipping in and out of defined categories;
people's mobilization to achieve
collective goals (e.g., rights for trees in Ecuador, rights to
experimental medical treatment, etc.);
the global circulation of people, ideas, objects, and money;
developments in biomedicine,
information and communications technology; the re-orientation of
political thinking and action
in terms of climate change; or the exploration of new ways to capture
sensory dimensions of
'movement.'
Our challenge as anthropologists is to keep pace. We propose using
'movement' as a
device for thinking through anthropological problems and the process
of fieldwork. On one
hand, 'movement' can broadly characterize the phenomena we study
today; on the other hand,
'movement' can denote corresponding shifts in how anthropologists can
(or must) re-examine the
tools at their disposal. In the spirit of generating a productive
environment where students and
faculty can discuss and collaborate, we ask participants to consider
some of the following
questions:
- Does 'movement' (as broadly conceived above but also open to
interpretation),
manifest in your own research? If so, in what ways does 'movement' become
apparent? If not, how would you characterize what you are studying?
- What is anthropologically curious about such 'movements'?
- Does the study of ?movement? in your research present any challenges
in terms of
how you can describe and/or analyze the phenomena under study? If so, what do
these challenges consist of? If not, then what kinds of descriptive or
analytic tools do
you use in your study of 'movement'?
- What role does 'movement' play in how we conceive of anthropology as
a discipline?
- Besides 'movement,' what other devices do you propose can be used by
anthropologists to describe contemporary phenomena?
We hope that re-thinking the idea of 'movement' can generate new lines
of inquiry in
individual researchers' work, as well as in the anthropological
discipline at large.
Submissions may include, but are not limited to, work in the following
subject areas:
- mobile populations (e.g., migrant workers, diaspora, etc.)
- governance (e.g., problems of governance, modes of governance ,etc.)
- self and subjectivity
- collective change (e.g., rights movements, protests, staying local, etc.)
- new and emerging technologies in various domains (e.g., social
media, biomedicine,
ICT, etc.)
- humans and the environment (e.g., climate change, urbanization, food
and agriculture,
etc.)
- fieldwork (experiences, problems, questions, etc.)
- sensory ethnography (methodological and theoretical problems, as
well as possibilities)

We invite students to submit abstracts of no more than 300 words to
anthrogradmcgill@gmail.com. Please include your name, graduate status (e.g.,
Undergraduate, M.A. student, Ph.D. candidate, etc.) and contact information.

Deadline for abstracts: Friday, December 21, 2012

Forum: PGSS David Thomson House, McGill University, Montréal
(www.thomsonhouse.ca<http://www.thomsonhouse.ca>)

Note: Conference participation and attendance is free.