AAA Call for Papers: Colonial Legacies, Contemporary Imaginaries, and the Space surrounding Oil and Gas Extraction Sites and Offices, Montr=?iso-8859-1?Q?=E9al?= Nov. 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS
Colonial Legacies, Contemporary Imaginaries, and the Space surrounding Oil
and Gas Extraction Sites and Offices

American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, Montreal,
November 16-20 2011,
Panel Organizer: Rémy Rouillard, PhD Candidate, McGill University

Fossil fuels allow us to move, as much as they fuel the material and
immaterial dreams of individuals, the ambitions of nation-states, and the
financial aspirations of the oil and gas industry. Yet, it is in the
interests of oil and gas companies to limit not only the flow of information
concerning the status of their reserves, but also the circulation of people
in and around the security perimeters surrounding their extraction sites and
head offices. This panel aims to bring together papers focused on the
imaginaries enveloping those located on either side of the secured zones of
oil and gas companies, be they delimited by physical barriers, surveillance,
or psychological barriers. Since interactions across this divide either tend
to be limited, or take place at higher political, economic, or
administrative levels, it is important to understand how people located
within and close to extraction sites make sense of what is happening on the
other side of the "fence", for example, through prejudice, rumor, or in
face-to-face interactions. These discourses and encounters are often partly
rooted in legacies of conquest and colonization, in the way that states
relate to oil-producing regions and their inhabitants, or in the traces
previously left by extractive industries. This panel seeks papers that
address (but are not limited to) the following issues:

- Ways of relating to spaces / places /landscapes on either side of the
security perimeters of extraction sites or offices;

- Perceptions of oil and gas workers and/or administrators about their
companies and industry, on their lived experience in the oilfields or
offices, on how they imagine or think about their distant "home", and on how
they view local inhabitants where oil or gas are extracted, as well as the
environment they live in;

- Traces left by (internal) colonization in the local population's
collective memory, as well as in the surrounding environment;

- The ways in which individuals and communities imagine their futures with
extractive industries, as well as without them when extracting operations
cease.

If you are interested, please send your paper abstracts to Rémy Rouillard
by email at remy.rouillard@mail.mcgill.ca by April 7th 2011.

For more information concerning the AAA Annual Meeting, please see the link
below:
http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/2011-AAA-Annual-Meeting.cfm

CFP repost: Claiming Nature: ‘Race’, Ethnicity and the Politics of Belonging

Call for Papers — Claiming Nature: 'Race', Ethnicity and the Politics
of Belonging.
Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association
(110th Annual Meeting
, November 16-20, 2011
, Montreal, QC,
Canada)

Over the past twenty years, anthropology has come to accept that much
of what we understand as environment, nature and landscape has
been—and continues to be—constructed by the communities that use,
perceive and dwell in these spaces. Much of this work has been
oriented towards the symbolic process of placemaking, forging identity
out of sacred locales, reconsidering the uses of animism in religious
praxis and addressing the broader 'materialist–symbolic' debate in the
discipline. However, too little attention has been paid to the ways
that these processes intersect with ethnicity, 'race' and forms of
contestation over land and belonging. From maroon perceptions of
remote wilderness as a place of refuge and safety from the brutality
and foreignness of the plantation to the construction of rural America
as a pure, white homeland for Euro-American settlers to the imagining
of tropical foragers as resources of the forest divested of any claim
to land or citizenship, ethnicity and 'race' is frequently implicated
in conflicts and debates about how different communities perceive and
'belong to' the land they occupy. This panel seeks contributions from
scholars interrogating the ways in which notions of 'race' and
ethnicity articulate within conceptualizations of human-nature
relatedness, ecological praxis, and cleavages that emerge between
different communities and identities.

Please send abstracts by e-mail to Marc Boglioli (mbogliol@drew.edu)
or Allan Dawson (adawson@drew.edu) at Drew University by Monday, 5th
April 2011. Session participants will be confirmed shortly thereafter.

"The Social," This Time: Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies of Social Analysis (2011 AAA Meetings)

CFP: "The Social," This Time: Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies of Social
Analysis
Organizers: Stephanie Lloyd (McGill University) and Kevin Karpiak (Eastern
Michigan University)
a panel proposed to the American Anthropological Association Annual
Meetings in Montreal, November 16-20, 2011

"Society does not exist, only individuals and families", to paraphrase
Margaret Thatcher. While this may be one of the most oft-paraphrased
statements about society, this panel will take truth claims such as
Thatcher's as provocations which point to debates that have raged for more
than a century among social scientists, politicians and an array of other
invested experts about the nature and description of collective life. In
social theory and philosophy these have been given expression in
everything from the bitter exchanges between Émile Durkheim and Gabriel
Tarde at the turn of the 20th century, to the rediscovery and adaptation
of the latter by such authors as Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour at the
turn of the 21st. In political-economic theory and policy they can be
seen in the debates which surrounded the rise of neoliberal economic
policies in the 1980's through the neo-Durkheimian driven European social
policies of the 1990s on social exclusion, to contemporary unease with
global capital and political representation.

Whether in the guise of the social's "end" (Baudrillard 1978), "death"
(Rose 1996), "retreat" (Kapferer 2005) or "reassembly" (Latour 2005), many
theorists have been troubled by, and sought to give conceptual shape to,
the nature of collective existence in order to offer cogent critical
analyses of these problems. As well they should, for such
reconceptualizations of the social – about its form and its very existence
– have impacts not only on the institutional existence of individuals in
terms of the services they will be offered, the support they will have
economically and politically, but also on their very ontological status as
biopolitical beings.

In this panel we are looking for ethnographically-informed contributions
that will shed light on the ways in which various concerned actors,
embedded in contexts and living with quotidian challenges to their notions
of their role in society, make use of, challenge and reconceptualize
versions of the social in order to shape and make sense of their lives.
In particular, we are interested in papers which augment the more
well-trod debates over "the social" indexed above by focusing on how such
concerns permeate lived realities in what Macintyre (1981) has called
"those intricate bodies of theory and practice which constitute human
cultures".

Please email abstracts to
kkarpiak@Emich.edu<mailto:kkarpiak@Emich.edu<mailto:kkarpiak@Emich.edu>>
and stephanie.Lloyd@McGill.ca<mailto:stephanie.Lloyd@McGill.ca>
<mailto:stephanie.Lloyd@McGill.ca<mailto:stephanie.Lloyd@McGill.ca%3Cmailto:stephanie.Lloyd@McGill.ca>>
by April 10th

CASCA: Job posting/Emplois

University of Victoria

http://cas-sca.ca/casca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=191%3Ajob-uvic-&catid=37&Itemid=88&lang=en

Lethbridge: Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track) - deadline extended to
April 15th

http://cas-sca.ca/casca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=188%3Ajob-lethbridge&catid=37&Itemid=88&lang=en

Appel de propositions - Colloque annuel de l=?iso-8859-1?Q?=92American_Anthropological_Association_16-20_novembre_2011.Montr=E9al,_Q2011.Montr=E9al,?= Qc.

An english version will follow

Appel de propositions
Colloque annuel de l'American Anthropological Association
16-20 novembre 2011. Montréal, Qc.

Titre de la session :
Survivre à l'abondance : alimentation, reproduction et habitation à l'ère
du superflu

Organisateurs : Anne Lardeux1 et Vincent Couture2
1 Département d'anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec,
Canada.
2 Service de génétique, Département de Pédiatrie, Faculté de médecine et des
sciences de la santé, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada.

La survie est un concept utilisé traditionnellement en anthropologie afin
d'aborder le
fonctionnement des sociétés dites « primitives ». Ces sociétés pratiquant une
économie de subsistance se caractérisent par une très forte dépendance à leur
environnement, ainsi qu'une existence centrée sur la réponse aux besoins
de base.
Sans surplus et nécessitant un ravitaillement quotidien, ces sociétés
vivaient sous la
menace constante du manque.
Des sociétés de subsistance aux sociétés d'abondance, s'est opéré le passage
d'une économie de la rareté à une économie du superflu. Pourtant, malgré
l'offre
massive de réponses aux besoins primaires, cette vie dans la durée de
l'individu et
du groupe apparait tout aussi problématique. Qu'en est-il aujourd'hui de
la survie
dans des sociétés d'abondance ? Quelle est notre expérience quotidienne de la
subsistance dans un environnement qui n'est plus celui de l'état de nature ?
L'idée derrière ce colloque est de mettre à jour les potentialités du
concept de survie
en l'appliquant à la réalité contemporaine. Chez Darwin, la survie d'une
espèce
repose sur le développement de traits rendant l'individu mieux adapté à son
environnement ou plus apte à se reproduire. Sloterdijk ouvre l'idée que la
survie ne
repose pas exclusivement sur une logique adaptative. Si un groupe se doit
d'affronter, sur ses bords extérieurs, les aléas de son environnement, il
tend à offrir
sur sa face interne un intérieur mieux protégé, propice au développement
d'autres
qualités que celles requises par l'adaptation directe au milieu
environnant. Dans le
confort de cette matrice, émergent des qualités auxquelles la seule
nécessité n'aurait
laissé aucune chance. L'environnement mis à distance, s'ouvre un monde où
habiter.
La vie biologique se double ainsi d'une forme inséparable.
Pour Agamben, cette vie non séparée de sa forme, de son mode, « définit
une vie –
la vie humaine – dans laquelle tous les modes, les actes et les processus
du vivre ne
sont jamais simplement des faits, mais toujours et avant tout des
possibilités de vie,
toujours et avant tout des puissances ». Les crises qui tissent notre
contemporain et
les modes de gouvernance qui co-fabriquent ces urgences opèrent une
séparation
de la vie biologique et de ses modes de vie et, par là, réduisent des
formes de vie
réelle en formes de survie. Ces crises bouleversent l'environnement et le
monde que
l'homme s'y est ouvert. Elles bouleversent les coordonnées d'un commun et
d'un
habiter idéal ; et c'est dans les marques laissées à la fois par leur
reflux et par celui
des utopies humanistes que l'humain doit subsister.
C'est à ce point de tension entre vie biologique, crise et formes de vie
contemporaines que nous voudrions développer notre analyse en
réfléchissant sur le
rapport entre la protection ou l'atteinte de la « maison » dans ces basiques
nécessités (habiter, manger, se reproduire) et les formes de vie hybrides
qui s'y
développent (comment occuper un espace, comment nourrir, comment se
reproduire
ou selon d'autres modalités comment demeurer, subsister, résister,
transmettre). La
question du « comment » adressée à ces « nécessités » permettrait de dépasser
l'assignement à des vies purement adaptatives pour s'intéresser aux
formes, aux
pratiques, aux techniques de vie de l'humain qui font son monde et son
rapport à
l'environnement.

Contacts : anne.lardeux@gmail.com
couture.vincent@gmail.com
Date limite de soumission des propositions : 13 avril 2011
Veuillez soumettre un résumé en anglais de 250 mots.

Call for Proposals
Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association
2011, Nov. 16-20, Montreal, QC.

Session title: Survival in Affluent Societies: Feeding, Breeding and
Housing

Organizers: Anne Lardeux1 and Vincent Couture2
1 Department of Anthropology, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada.
2 Division of Genetics, Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine and
Health
Sciences, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada.

Survival is a concept traditionally used in anthropology to address the
functioning of
so-called "primitive" societies. These societies, practicing a subsistence
economy,
are characterized by a very strong dependence on their environment and a life
centered on responding to basic needs. Without surplus and requiring daily
supplies,
these societies lived under the constant threat of shortfall.
From subsistence societies to affluent societies, there was a transition
from an
economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance. Yet, despite the vast
offer of
responses to basic needs, life in the continuance of the individual and
the group
appears equally problematic. What is "surviving" in today's affluent
societies? What is
our daily experience of subsistence in an environment that is no longer
that of a
"state of nature"?
The idea behind this session is to renew the potentialities of the concept
of survival
by applying it to contemporary reality. For Darwin, the survival of a
species is based
on the development of individual characteristics in order to be more
adaptable to its
environment or more likely to reproduce. Sloterdijk proposes the idea that
survival is
not solely based on an adaptive logic. If a group has to face its external
boundaries,
the vagaries of its environment, it tends to deliver an interior that is
better protected,
whereby enabling the development of other qualities than those required in
the direct
adaptation to the surrounding environment. In the comfort of this matrix,
qualities
emerge that would have otherwise had no chance. The environment, once put
aside,
opens to a world within which to dwell. Henceforth biological life takes
on a dual and
inseparable form.
For Agamben, this life, which is not separated from its form, its mode,
"defines a life -
human life - in which the single ways, acts, and processes of living are
never simply
facts but always and above all possibilities of life, always and above all
power." The
crises that brand our contemporaneity and the modes of governance that
co-produce
these emergencies operate on a separation of biological life and its ways
of life, and
thereby reduce life forms into veritable forms of survival. These crises
disrupt the
environment and the world humanity has opened. They dislocate the
coordinates of a
common and ideal dwelling; and it is in the tidemarks left by both their
reflux and the
humanist utopias that humans must subsist.
It is at the crossroad between biological life, crisis and contemporary
forms of life that
we will develop our analysis by reflecting on the relationship between the
protection
or achievement of the "house" in terms of the basic necessities (feeding,
breeding
and housing) and the hybrid forms of life developed therein (how to occupy
a space,
how to feed, how to reproduce or in other modalities how to stay, survive,
resist,
transmit). Addressing the question of the "how" of these necessities
allows us to go
beyond the frame of purely adaptive lives in order to pay attention to the
forms,
practices and techniques of the human that constitute their world and
their relation to
the environment.

Contacts : anne.lardeux@gmail.com
couture.vincent@gmail.com
Submission deadline: 2011, April 13th.
Send an abstract of 250 words.

Extended Deadline - AAA CFP - Tidemarks of Secularism: Religion and the Other

AAA 2011 Call for Papers

Mary-Lee Mulholland (Mount Royal University)

Panel Title: Tidemarks of Secularism: Religion and the Other

From banning niqabs and kirpans in public places to cuts in funding to
religiously affiliated community organizations, western nations are
increasing their commitment to the project of secularization in the name of
liberal emancipation and its freedoms. This, despite the fact, that many
of these same governments are becoming increasingly influenced by the
Christian right. The desire to eradicate traces of religiosity in public
spaces, policies and funding is formulated as a legacy of the idealized
(but rarely practiced) separation of church and state. This secularization
is used by both the left and the right to limit and exclude what is deemed
illegitimate political and social activities from the public sphere.
Critiques of secularization as a western bias leading to policies of
exclusion (Asad 2003, Mahmood 2005) are not new, however, the increased
political pressure to secularize requires further examination. This is
seen to be particularly true in discourses such as "reasonable
accommodation" and the banning of the niqab and burka in various public
spaces in Europe and North America. Moreover, Christian groups dedicated
to social justices issues are also witnessing cuts to their funding and
limits to their praxis. What seem to be constant is these struggle is the
manner in with inappropriate religiosity intersects with citizenship,
race, gender and ethnicity. This panel will examine how the legacies of
secularization are working to exclude certain bodies marked as different.

Questions that papers address may include:

1. How are policies of secularization directed at newcomers and
minorities?

2. How are diversity models, such as multiculturalism, becoming the
scapegoats for the failure of western nations to integrate religious
minorities?

3. How are women's bodies and beliefs becoming the battleground in
which secularism is being fought over?

If you are interested in presenting a paper as part of this panel, please
submit a 250-word abstract by April 5, 2011 to
mmulholland@mtroyal.ca<mmulholland@mtyroyal.ca>

AAA panel, call for papers

Call for papers, AAA Montreal, November 16-20, 2011.

"Practices of Masculinity: Boundaries, Contagion, and the Marking of
Difference"

This panel takes the 2011 AAA theme of ?traces, tidemarks, and
legacies? as an opportunity to investigate the relationship between
contemporary practices of masculinity and processes of boundary-making
and marking. We are broadly interested in the ?work? of masculinity
in various guises: How is masculinity employed in difference-making,
and how do men (and others) work to create, recreate, maintain, alter,
or challenge such distinctions? How might we understand these
distinctions as outgrowths of both new and familiar difference-making
and sustaining processes associated with globalization, political and
economic competition, and the cultural juxtapositions occasioned by
mobility and exchange?

Like tidemarks, boundaries often shift, but also may be crossed, just
as distinctions may be blurred, limits threatened; difference-marking
practices of masculinity may fall short, or fail entirely. We are
therefore also interested in exploring danger, contagion, and failure.
When and why are certain practices of masculinity considered
threatening, or under threat? How does the fear of contagion across
boundaries invoke and shape masculinity? In the production of
distinctions that rely upon masculinity, what is the cost of failure?

The papers in this panel address the practices generative of
oppositional identities, and the practices that simultaneously
destabilize or threaten them, as well. We therefore invite
ethnographically-grounded contributions from prospective presenters
whose research engages any of the following (or related) questions:

? What are the tidemarks against which masculinity is measured in the
21st century, and what shifting ?tides? might these reflect?
? What are the contexts and evaluative standards against which groups
maintain coherent visions of what it is to be a successful, good, or
accomplished man worthy of recognition?
? What are the difference-making mechanisms that sustain social
boundaries, and how is their safeguarding associated with the
protection of symbolic domains?

Please send abstracts by e-mail to Antonio Sorge at
asorge@uwaterloo.ca no later than Friday, April 8, 2011.

Organizer: Antonio Sorge (Department of Anthropology, University of Waterloo)
Chair: Naor Ben-Yehoyada (Department of Anthropology, Harvard University)