Forwarded from the critical geography list ....


ASA Decennial Conference 2003
Anthropology & Science
Call For Papers


There is no society in the world today where people do not have to
confront the effects of scientific innovation. But innovation fuels
debate. The authority and expertise of science are not accepted by
everyone nor is science able to sustain the appearance of neutrality
in relation to political, commercial and military interests. Faced
with mistrust and hostility, scientists and their supporters are
inclined to exaggerate the potential benefits of their discoveries for
humanity at large, leading to equally magnified claims, on the part of
their detractors, about the possible damaging consequences of
scientific and technological innovations harnessed to major corporate
interests it is claimed applications of science and technology have
exacerbated pre-existing divisions between rich and poor and created
new inequalities.

Anthropology has a vital role to play in contributing to a more
measured debate on these issues. Current anthropological research is
helping us to understand the extent and limits of science's impacts on
social life in different regions of the world. It reveals how people
receive, and make sense of, scientific knowledge, and how this
knowledge is treated in relation to 'local' or 'indigenous'
understandings. It is also leading to fresh, comparative insights into
the organisation and culture of scientific communities themselves, and
into the ways such communities are situated in relation to
institutionalised structures of power and finance. Investigation of
the links between science and capitalism have shown how emergent
technologies can aggravate global injustice, affect patterns of social
organisation, and transform the ways rights over persons and property
are codified and exercised.

But many questions remain.

Is there such a thing as 'the western scientific imagination'? If so,
can science ever be dissociated from the hegemony of western-derived
paradigms and practices?

Can there be a non-western science, or is any critique of western
modernity necessarily a critique, even a rejection, of science as
well?

These are questions that can and should be pursued in both western and
non-western contexts.
A further set of questions surrounds the status of anthropology
itself. There has been much debate about whether anthropology is, or
can possibly be, a science. The issue now concerns the authority of
anthropological knowledge in the public domain.

Is the task of anthropology to show how the prevailing divisions
between the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities might be
transcended? And with its emphasis on the social embeddedness of
scientific practice, how is anthropology affected by the contemporary
renegotiation of the boundary between science and society?
These are questions not only for social and cultural anthropologists
but also for biological anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
and historians of science. The conference will cover the following
broad sub-themes:

1. Sciences and technologies of the body, the person and the social.

2. The scientific imagination and the imagination of science.

3. Is science western? Can there be a non-western science?

4. How do the links between science and global capitalism affect
science's impact on local and regional populations?

5. Beyond 'science' and 'indigenous knowledge'.

6. Cultures of science, scientific communities and the
institutionalisation of knowledge production.

7. How are the knowledges and practices of science and technology
socially embedded, and what are the relations between them?

8. Anthropology: art, science or social science?

9. Beyond 'biology' and 'culture'.


Scholars wishing to organise panels or present papers on these issues
are invited to contact:
Nasira Asghar
Project and Conference Administrator
Department of Social Anthropology
Roscoe Building Brunswick Street
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
Tel: 0161 275 3997
Fax: 0161 275 3970
E-mail: [log in to unmask]


------------
Christopher Bear
[log in to unmask]

Department of Geography and Environment
University of Aberdeen
Elphinstone Road
Aberdeen
AB24 3UF

Telephone (office):       +44-(0)1224-273491
Fax:                        +44-(0)1224-272331

URL: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/geography/cbear.hti

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