Many apologies - I forgot to include the CFP deadline, which is 8 
January 2018. More details on the conference can be found at 
https://therai.org.uk/conferences/art-materiality-and-representation.
Best wishes,
Liana

On 29/08/2017 15:50, Liana Chua wrote:
> Please circulate, and feel free to drop me a line if you have any 
> questions!
> Best wishes,
> Liana
>
> ************
> Call for papers:
>
> Anthropologies of witnessing: imaginaries, technologies, practices
> http://nomadit.co.uk/rai/events/rai2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6065
> *
> Royal Anthropological Institute Conference - Art, Materiality and 
> Representation - British Museum, 1-3 June 2018*
>
> Short abstract
>
> This panel explores the imaginaries, technologies and practices 
> through which witnessing - as a morally- and politically-loaded 
> intervention, and not just an act of seeing - is facilitated and 
> conceived in multiple ethnographic contexts.
>
>
>        Long abstract
>
> The notion of witnessing has made constant, if intermittent, 
> appearances in anthropology, both as an analytic (e.g. Dave 2014, 
> Fassin 2008, Givoni 2011, McLagan 2006), and as the ethical or 
> political basis of various forms of anthropological engagement (e.g, 
> Bringa 2016, Das 2006, Marcus 2005, Scheper-Hughes 1995). This panel 
> seeks to complicate and extend such conversations by exploring the 
> imaginaries, technologies and practices that mediate different modes 
> and concepts of witnessing.
>
> Taking witnessing as a morally and politically-loaded intervention 
> rather than a mere act of seeing, the panel explores three key areas: 
> 1) the technologies and affordances – representational, 
> epistemological, ontological, and so on – through which witnessing 
> occurs and ‘witnesses’ and ‘witnessed’ are produced; 2) historically 
> and culturally-specific relations and regimes of witnessing; and 3) 
> the reflexive and/or recursive implications of ethnographies of 
> witnessing for anthropological thought and practice. Crucially, it 
> seeks to destabilize distinctions that often characterize conventional 
> notions of witnessing, e.g. art/science, subjectivity/objectivity, 
> truth/fiction, event/process, asking instead how these may be 
> inextricably bound up in practice.
>
> More specific questions include:
>
> - Through what material, visual, artistic, affective, embodied and 
> verbal devices – from testimony to photography to performance art – 
> does witnessing occur?
>
> - What kinds of relations, temporalities and artefacts emerge from 
> these processes?
>
> - How are ‘witnesses’ and ‘witnessed’ produced, apprehended and/or 
> challenged?
>
> - To what extent is witnessing a representational process – and in 
> what other terms can it be conceived?
>
> - To what extent can ‘truths’ and ‘facts’ be artistically conveyed or 
> evoked?
>
> - How are global regimes of witnessing constructed, and how well (or 
> badly) do they travel?
>
> - What role do museums, art galleries, archives, educational 
> institutions and other similar bodies play in acts, processes and 
> regimes of witnessing?
>
> - What can culturally- or historically-specific tropes and practices 
> of witnessing contribute to ongoing anthropological debates?
>
> - What happens when different imaginaries, technologies and practices 
> of witnessing intersect or clash?
>
> Panellists are invited to address these and other relevant questions 
> both critically (e.g. Angel-Anjani 2004, Reed-Danahay 2016) and 
> creatively, through ethnographic, conceptual or experimental means. By 
> shedding light on the complex, uneven processes and practices of 
> witnessing, the panel will speak to key themes of the conference, 
> including how representations act on/in and link different contexts, 
> and how visual imaginaries and moral politics are generated and 
> sustained.
>
>
>
>

-- 
Dr Liana Chua
Lecturer in Anthropology
Department of Social and Political Sciences
Brunel University London
Uxbridge, UB8 3PH
United Kingdom
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/liana-chua
44-(0)1895-265429

The Christianity of Culture: Conversion, Ethnic Citizenship, and the Matter of Religion in Malaysian Borneo
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=529290

Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering After Alfred Gell
http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=ChuaDistributed

Southeast Asian Perspectives on Power
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415683456

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