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Dear List Members,
May we draw your attention to our panel "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow:
Ethnographies of transient social formations" for next summer's EASA
biennial conference at the Nanterre University, Paris.
You will find a full panel description at:
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2012/panels.php5?PanelID=1319
To submit a proposal (deadline: Nov, 28), please click "Propose a paper"
at the bottom of the page.
Short Abstract
It is often assumed that social and spatial formations are made to last,
but certain formations
are meant by their members to be ephemeral and
transient rather than permanent. The discussion of ethnographic examples
is intended to stimulate more general methodological reflection. When is
ephemerality a constraint on social relations? When and for whom may it
be a tactical asset? How does ephemerality work socially, and what might
be its uses? What challenges does it pose to anthropological research?
Long Abstract
While
anthropologists recognize that social aggregates and cultures are
in principle emergent, always changeable, require constant
maintenance
and even can perish, it often seems assumed that both space and
society
are generally made to last. Such methodological assumptions of a
perpetuity
of being and identity can be usefully challenged by
ethnographic research that acknowledges transience and ephemerality as
defining characteristics of certain spatial and social
formations.
Some examples of such formations would be the transient audiences of
street art, the "single-service friendships" in air travel, flash mobs,
internet chatrooms, the communities of homeless shelters, happenings and
music festivals, nomad
encampments, guerrilla cells, or tourist groups.
The following questions drive the panel: What spatial and social forms
are meant by their members to be ephemeral and why? When is ephemerality
a result of
oppression or domination, when is it a compromise, and when
and for whom may it be a deliberate end in itself? Are transient
formations marked by uncertainty and disquiet, or by the members' relief
that commitment need not be maintained forever? Just how fundamental is
the relative permanence of the spatial
and
the social for
anthropological theory and method? Should we even research ephemerality
at all? As a discipline that has long emphasized the diachrony of
structure as well as favoring depth of understanding, how can
anthropology deal with seemingly superficial and a priori transient
phenomena? To address these epistemological challenges, the panel seeks
to assemble stimulating cases of
ephemeral socio-spatial formations.
Looking forward to reading your exciting papers and meeting you in
Paris,
Mateusz Laszczkowski,
Felix Girke
Panel conveners
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