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PANEL CALL FOR PAPERS: 2011 ASA Conference, to be held at the University of
Wales Trinity St David, 13-16 September 2011.
Exhuming the 'big picture', burying fish, cats and falcons: limits to the
agency of non-living things
SHORT ABSTRACT
This panel explores the historical and habitual 'backgrounding' of animals
and other non-human biological forms in anthropology. Are epistemologies
which emphasise human agency really challenged by the emergence of a
'flattening' approach? Is it possible to pay too much attention to fauna
and flora?
LONG ABSTRACT
The poet W. H. Auden observes 'dreadful' events happening in
"...some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree."
Theorists like Latour and Callon have advocated 'flattening' the social
field, in order to better account for the heterogeneity of the various
actors involved. Doing so, they have provided frameworks within which the
agency of non-human entities, including other living things, can be
foregrounded. However, flatteners betray a 'microphiliac' tendency to
elevate the agency of inconsequential entities, while underplaying the
effectivity of what is dismissed as 'the big picture' (Latour 2005). This
panel will explore the possibility of exhuming the 'big picture'.
For the social flatteners, agentic entities have to be tangible and
observable. Like a nominalist, who regards 'the acceptance of abstract
entities as a kind of superstition or myth' (Carnap 1992), Latour attacks
the very ontological category of the abstract, 'stuck in the mythical
belief of another world behind the real world.' (Latour 2005) In our
anthropological experience, however, the huge and abstract, like God and
The Economy, have been more important than the small and tangible, like the
fish, cats and falcons we encountered in the field. This panel seeks to
juxtapose such formidable master-narratives and non-humans, to frame the
prominence that ought properly to be given to non-human agency.
Conveners:
Michal Murawski (University of Cambridge)
Dominic Martin (University of Cambridge)
Discussant: Hayder Al-Mohammad (University of Kent)
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Please submit your papers for our panel by 29 April via this link:
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/asa/asa2011/panels.php5?PanelID=928
You can email us at:
[log in to unmask] (Michal Murawski)
[log in to unmask] (Dominic Martin)
--
G. MichaĆ Murawski
PhD Candidate
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge
Address:
674 King's College
Cambridge CB2 1ST
Email: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
www.palacologia.blogspot.com
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