CFP Midterm Conference of the Europeanist Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists

Dear colleagues,

Please find below the call for papers for the 2013 Midterm Conference of
the Europeanist Network of the European Association of Social
Anthropologists (EASA). The conference, entitled "The Nomadism of Social
Anthropologists", will be held in Bucharest, Romania on 26-27 April 2013.

In order to improve the attendance and visibility of what is expected to be
a relatively small conference (12-16 contributions), we have negotiated a
partnership with the organisers of the 11th Regional Meeting of the Border
Crossings Network (see www.border-crossings.eu), who have kindly agreed to
be our hosts.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts (maximum 400 words) by 15
January 2013.

Yours faithfully,

Samuel Shapiro
University of Auckland (New Zealand)


CFP ?The Nomadism of Social Anthropologists?

Midterm Conference of the Europeanist Network of the European Association
of Social Anthropologists (EASA) ? jointly held with the Border Crossings
Network

26-27th of April 2013, Bucharest, Romania



While anthropologists of the past decades have devoted increasing attention
both to questions of reflexivity and to people ?on the move? such as
migrants, relatively little attention has focused on the geographical and
cultural movement of social anthropologists themselves, especially since
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Even if there is growing interest in
non-hegemonic anthropologies by scholars who have often lived in several
countries (esp. Daveluy and Dorias 2010; Ribeiro and Escobar 2006) and
recent work on ?the ethnographic self as resource? (Collins and Gallinat
2010) argues that anthropologists? personal experiences provide potentially
insightful ethnographic data that can enrich their scientific analysis, the
consequences of past and present anthropologists? nomadism on their own
research ? including their training, career and grant opportunities ? have
not been thoroughly analysed. It is common knowledge that today, in Europe
and beyond, being ?on the move? has increasingly become a part of many
anthropologists? lives.


Possibilities for academic nomadism exist in the student years through the
EU Erasmus programme and joint PhDs (?cotutelles?), and continue into
professional academic life due to the scarcity of academic positions,
hyper-specialisation, the exigencies of funding and the constraints of
funding criteria (see for example the EU?s Marie Curie programs) or to
simple anthropological curiosity. While not being restricted to
anthropologists, this mobile mode of life has particular consequences for
the scientific work of anthropologists, from how they perceive
relationships in the field to the ways in which they envisage their
writing, from the need to develop coping strategies faced to continually
changing research groups to the difficult adaptation to a new foreign
audience. Questions of fundamental and applied research as well as of
neutrality, engagement and militantism are but some issues on which
anthropologists? personal trajectories weigh heavily.



This conference seeks original theoretical and personal reflections about
how academic nomadism through different countries, cultures and continents
affects the practices, day-to-day experiences and theoretical approaches of
social anthropologists (that include but are not limited to the domain of
their training, teaching and research). We invite contributors to consider
some of the questions below:



? What motivates future anthropologists to seek training in one country
instead of another?

? How does exposure to anthropology as practiced in several countries
influence their research: the topics that anthropologists study, the
theoretical approaches they privilege and the language(s) and audience(s)
they publish in and for?

? How do larger historical and political issues (e.g. post-socialism,
former British and French colonial presence, American empire, regional
traditions such as in Latin America) play into the larger world in which
anthropologists live and research, and influence their theoretical
approaches?

? What kinds of moral and ethical issues are involved when the
researcher is based in several countries, or has to negotiate different
ethical standards between the country of one?s host institution and that of
one?s fieldwork, while having been socialised in yet another ethical mode?

? How does the researcher negotiate his or her figure of rootlessness in
?stable? field environments?



As the professional anthropologist as an academic and intellectual migrant
is not a completely new character, analyses of historical material on
20thcentury anthropologists is welcome.



Please send 400-word abstracts in English by the 15th of January 2013 to
ef.easa.conference@gmail.com. The conference will be held jointly with the
Border Crossings Network?s Regional Conference (
http://www.border-crossings.eu) in Bucharest on 26-27 of April 2013.



Lorena Anton, University of Bordeaux (France)

Monica Heintz, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (France)

Samuel Shapiro, University of Auckland (New Zealand)