AAA 2013 CFPs

American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting
Chicago / November 20-24, 2013


Panel Title: Thinking with a Camera during Revolutionary Times: Generative
Visualities in the Middle East

Panel Organizers: Mark R. Westmoreland (The American University in Cairo)
& Diana K. Allan (Harvard University)

Panel Description: This panel seeks to examine the proliferation of new
visual approaches among researchers, activists, and ordinary citizens with
a camera in the contemporary Middle East. Recent images from across the
Arab world have revealed a renewed investment in political visibility,
which suggest a challenge to the redundancy of images produced for western
audiences. While the region is undeniably beleaguered by simplistic
representations, both spontaneous acts of self-expression and more
measured efforts to document the social and political conditions indicate
emergent modes of mediation. These media-based innovations extend beyond
merely evidentiary claims or critiques of biased media coverage, but work
to situate subjectivity within affective states of becoming. Building on
Kathleen Stewart's interest in the generativity of ordinary affects, we
endeavor to elucidate the modes of knowing that remain "uncaptured by
claimed feelings" (Stewart 2005: 1027). Accordingly, we are interested in
the way that visual media has been used to record other kinds of
experiences and rethink what constitutes the political. In other words,
how do visual approaches align with modes of lived experience in ways that
might not register as political in more normative models, but which
nonetheless form the basis of how people live and experience political
life?

Despite the predominance of images in these contexts, there ironically
appears to be a dearth of visual research in the region. Based on a
twenty-year content analysis undertaken by the journal Visual
Anthropology, only 6% of the journal's published articles focused on the
Middle East compared to Europe 18%, Africa 22%, and Asia 30% (Davey
2008:199). One is forced to ask, whither the visual anthropologists of the
Middle East? Are there really so few? On the contrary, this panel aims to
highlight groundbreaking interdisciplinary work by researchers, activists,
and artists in order to reconsider the representational possibilities of
this dynamic though often caricatured region. As such, whether addressing
the emergence of new visualities in the region or advancing media-based
research approaches, we seek presentations that strive to critically
'think with a camera during revolutionary times'.

For instance, if we locate the production of knowledge through corporeal
processes of looking and being rather than discursively communicating it
in thoughts and descriptions (MacDougall 2006), how is this expressed in
the emergent image-making practices of the region? Or, if observational
modes encourage one to approach the world without preconception, then how
does one engage revolutionary contexts without assuming politically
passivity? Indeed, if the camera lens radically realigns the body of the
filmmaker according to the ethnographic encounter (Grimshaw and Ravetz
2009), then how does the recent return to observational approaches in
visual anthropology parallel the "political mimesis" (Gaines 1999) of cell
phone filmmaking? Put differently, how do the emerging aesthetics of
camera-phones relate to the revolutionary potential of new social media?
And what does the interface between street politics and online activism
mean for the way we make sense of images of resistance? And yet, what
assumptions about the efficacy of visual methods underlie the imperatives
to collect revolutionary images?

Please submit a 250-word abstract (including paper title, keywords, and
afflation) to Mark Westmoreland [log in to unmask] by April 10 for
consideration.



Mark R. Westmoreland

Assistant Professor of Anthropology
The American University in Cairo

*****

CFP AAA 2013: Bureaucratic Chaos and Market Rule: Social Service and
Health Care Work in the U.S. Recent ethnographic explorations of
bureaucracy depart from the Weberian premise that bureaucracies create
rationalized, hierarchical spaces for the efficient administration of
government and business. Instead, bureaucracies are described as motors of
social indifference (Herzfeld 1992); chaotic (Gupta 2012); and shot
through with contradictions generated by the exigencies of "market rule"
(Holland et al. 2007). Public services in the United States have been
subjected to market rule over the last thirty years. Government agencies
increasingly contract with both for-profit and non-profit organizations in
order to carry out their mandates to provide relief benefits and basic
services like health care and housing. In short, basic governmental
functions are now commonly delivered through public-private partnerships
imagined as more efficient and responsive than large governmental
bureaucracies. How does this hybridized arrangement impact social service
and health care employees? If as Holland and colleagues contend, "market
rule is primarily an experiment with public services and the degree to
which the motivation to profit affects the quality of for-profit efforts"
(2007;10), then how do service providers respond to the "motive to
profit"? Do they describe their efforts in economic terms? What other
ethical frameworks do they employ through their self-understanding and
daily practices? This panel focuses on the experiences of social service
and health care workers by exploring how they are enmeshed in the business
ideologies that increasingly structure non-profit and health care
workplaces. Instead of efficient public-private partnerships, the papers
here relate bureaucratic contexts that are "shot through with contingency
and barely controlled chaos" (Gupta 2012). If service bureaucracies become
increasingly contingent and chaotic, what effect will this have on public
support for governmental services for the poor?
We are looking for one or two additional papers.If you are interested,
please email an abstract to Jessica Mulligan at jmullig5@providence.edu by
Monday, April 8th.

*****

CFP AAA 2013: Bureaucratic Chaos and Market Rule: Social Service and
Health Care Work in the U.S. Recent ethnographic explorations of
bureaucracy depart from the Weberian premise that bureaucracies create
rationalized, hierarchical spaces for the efficient administration of
government and business. Instead, bureaucracies are described as motors of
social indifference (Herzfeld 1992); chaotic (Gupta 2012); and shot
through with contradictions generated by the exigencies of "market rule"
(Holland et al. 2007). Public services in the United States have been
subjected to market rule over the last thirty years. Government agencies
increasingly contract with both for-profit and non-profit organizations in
order to carry out their mandates to provide relief benefits and basic
services like health care and housing. In short, basic governmental
functions are now commonly delivered through public-private partnerships
imagined as more efficient and responsive than large governmental
bureaucracies. How does this hybridized arrangement impact social service
and health care employees? If as Holland and colleagues contend, "market
rule is primarily an experiment with public services and the degree to
which the motivation to profit affects the quality of for-profit efforts"
(2007;10), then how do service providers respond to the "motive to
profit"? Do they describe their efforts in economic terms? What other
ethical frameworks do they employ through their self-understanding and
daily practices? This panel focuses on the experiences of social service
and health care workers by exploring how they are enmeshed in the business
ideologies that increasingly structure non-profit and health care
workplaces. Instead of efficient public-private partnerships, the papers
here relate bureaucratic contexts that are "shot through with contingency
and barely controlled chaos" (Gupta 2012). If service bureaucracies become
increasingly contingent and chaotic, what effect will this have on public
support for governmental services for the poor?
We are looking for one or two additional papers.If you are interested,
please email an abstract to Jessica Mulligan at jmullig5@providence.edu by
Monday, April 8th.