Dear Colleagues,
Please find blow our call for papers. Please distribute widely. Deadline - one day befoe New Year, December 30, 23:59
With best regards
Klavs
CALL FOR PAPERS
Panel: State in everyday life: users and losers
Conference: PLACES, Rīga Stradiņš University
Location and Date: Riga, Latvia, April 2, 2019
Abstract submission deadline: December 30, 2019
Panel Conveners: Klāvs Sedlenieks (RSU), Aimar Ventsel (University of Tartu, Estonia)
About 100 years ago, Riga – the locale of the PLACES conference – was a booming centre of the anarchist movement. The notion of people living without a state did not hold, however: the imagery and power of the state have been paramount ever since. Today, in everyday conversations online and offline, the state is one of the main topics in Latvia. Apparently, this is not a story of Latvia alone.
This panel is inspired by an observation that, in certain parts of the world, the state seems to be of particular importance for people – their hopes and aspirations, longing and condemnation, practices and illusions. Ethnographies of the state are often written about places where the state seems to be (both emically and etically) lacking, failing or disappearing. At the same time, anthropologists working in countries from the Baltics to the Balkans and from Central Europe to Central Asia, often write about the state, reflecting not only on its supposedly oppressive or threatening nature (which is, undoubtedly, present as well), but also the expectations people invest in the state in their attempts to create what they sometimes call “a normal life”, defined by the presence of the state.
This panel aims to investigate the question of what it is about the state that makes people yearn for it. Why, despite the grim historical experience, is it something in which people keep investing their hopes and dreams? What are the practices and performances through which people perpetuate the institution of the state, even as they aim to change certain aspects of it?
The panel also invites the participants to consider the ways in which the state is being used and relied upon to accomplish things in everyday life. Is the state vs society dichotomy still valid (if it ever was)? If yes, how is the boundary drawn? How are people drawn into and themselves willing to submit to the project of the state through personal stories, bodily practices and imaginations?
The organisers invite anthropologists and scholars of related fields to explore the above questions on the grounds of their field data from across the globe. At the same time, we also encourage theoretic explorations of the current trends and future possibilities regarding the phenomenon known as the “state”.
The panel is a part of the annual conference organised by Rīga Stradiņš University. PLACES stand for Political science, Law, Anthropology, Communication, Economics, Sociology to emphasise the interdisciplinary nature of the event.
Please submit abstracts here:
http://places-conference2019.rsu.lv/abstracts/abstract-submission-guidelines <http://places-conference2019.rsu.lv/abstracts/abstract-submission-guidelines>
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