Reminder/deadline extended - CASCA/SANA 2016 Panel CFP: Solidarity with who?: On the Challenges of Studying Up

Solidarity with who?: On the Challenges of Studying Up

Anthropologists often position themselves in solidarity with marginal
groups, frequently represented by our research participants. Yet, for
several decades, anthropologists have also focused on studying
powerful institutions, including sites of scientific and technological
practice, government bureaucracies, and legal and policing systems.
Through this practice of "studying-up," anthropologists unpack the
meanings and practices of those operating within and through often
opaque institutional systems, providing a means of understanding and
often critiquing operations of power (Nader 1989). Yet, conducting
ethnographies of powerful actors and institutions can put us at odds
with the interests, goals, and politics of our research participants.
This panel invites papers that explore the complexities of enacting
solidarities while "studying-up," including but not limited to
discussions of productive and problematic solidarities in the field
and beyond, different means and forms of solidarity, analyses of
critical versus collaborative approaches to ethnography, and
considerations of relationships other than solidarity in fieldwork.

Session to be submitted for the CASCA/SANA meetings at Dalhousie
University, May 11 - 15, 2016. Please send inquiries and abstracts
(100-150 words) to Samantha Breslin (sdbreslin@mun.ca) by January 22,
2016.