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AAA Sesssion Call for Papers
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REGIMES OF LIVING: TECHNIQUES FOR THE ETHICAL MANAGEMENT OF LIFE The terms ethics and bioethics have come to occupy increasingly important positions in public and anthropological debates. This session explores ethics not as a unitary and fixed system for distinguishing right action from wrong, but
as an analytical construct for investigating the practices, discourses, and modes of reasoning which comprise diverse conceptions of right action. One compelling conceptual proposal for approaching problems of ethics has been offered by anthropologists Stephen Collier and Andrew Lakoff. In "Ethics
and the Anthropology of Modern Reason" Lakoff and Collier use the term regimes of living to refer to "congeries of moral reasoning and practice that emerge in situations that present ethical problems - that is, situations in which the question of how to live is at stake." These regimes of living
consist of: "underlying norms (such as austerity and self-denial), techniques (such as self-observation and careful record keeping), and forms of rationality (calculation)...[and they] provide, in uncertain situations, contingent means for organizing, reasoning about, and living ethically. They
define situated understandings of the good, modes of possible action, and techniques for working on or forming subjects." In a variety of contemporary situations the convergence of matters of modernity and morality have made questions concerning "How should one live?" particularly salient. These
sites pose critical dilemmas through a variety of mechanisms including conflicting normative frameworks, the practical impossibility of performing what might be considered the right action, limited or conflicting information about likely outcomes, or the introduction of new situations which previous
frameworks are unable to accommodate. The papers in this session engage the concepts of ethics and regimes of living as they are made visible through these particularly challenging dilemmas. They speak to disparate topical concerns while drawing from and informing common theoretical ground
concerning possible techniques for the analysis of the emergence and management of contemporary regimes of living. The methodological concerns of this session are particularly significant, as the discourses and practices involved in regimes of living are often invisible. These papers offer examples
of the ways in which dilemmas, or situations where right action is unclear, can be used as a means of seeing the regimes of living at play in these and other less explicitly problematic moments.
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If you are interested in participating please send an abstract to China Scherz by March 29th.
Best Regards,
China Scherz
China Scherz
Graduate Student
Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine University of California at San Francisco
3333 California Suite 485
San Francisco, CA 94143
(415) 504-6450
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