ASA Conference, 4-7 July 2016, University of Durham
P46: Maintaining the Future? On Post-Cold War Practices and Politics of the Future
Dear all,
Please, consider proposing a paper to our panel on "Maintaining the Future? - On Post-Cold War Practices and Politics of the Future". Find further information on the panel below and on how to submit a paper proposal here: http://www.nomadit.co.uk/asa/asa2016/panels.php5?PanelID=4276 . The call for papers is already open and will close on 15 February.
We are looking forward to exciting presentations and intense discussions!
Best,
Dace and Felix.
PS: And a Happy New Year to all of you!
Convenors
Felix Ringel (University of Vienna)
Dace Dzenovska (University of Oxford)
Short Abstract
This panel invites ethnographic explorations of maintaining, enduring and sustaining as practices and politics of the future. How are these practices related to currently widespread insecurities, as well as the absence of legitimate grand narratives that promise to overcome the oppressive present?
Long Abstract
In search for alternative political and analytical pathways into the future, anthropologists have experimented with a variety of ethnographically derived analytical concepts. Concepts such as hope, emergence and alternative lifeworlds figure prominently in contemporary anthropological thought. Our ethnographic work, however, has led us to use terms that seem less promissory, even conservative: maintaining, enduring and sustaining. And yet, they suggest new pathways into the future, namely those that hold the possibility of the future open through preventing decay or ruination in the present.
This panel invites papers that critically explore different pathways into the future in the post-Cold War era. Without being restricted to the literature on post-socialism, we invite papers to explore how and why "muddling through" emerges as a response to deeply felt insecurities. Why do practices, politics and analytics of maintaining, enduring and sustaining emerge as salient in this particular historical moment? What kind of urban and rural futures are 'prefigured' in them, producing what kind of uneven geographies? How are such practices, politics and analytics shaped by the absence of other meta-narratives, such as socialism, which have historically offered an alternative imaginary for Western left and postcolonial elites?
Proposed contributions should provide detailed ethnographic analyses of new sites, practices and subjects of politics, whilst at the same time reflect upon the analytical tools at hand to understand these practices of, and politics towards, the future. We see this as an invitation to being stuck, yet again, in the future - and thereby maintain the present differently.
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