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CfP EASA 2012 What happens when we stop believing in or believing that?
(W112)

Convenor
Anne de Sales (CNRS)
Christian McDonaugh (Oxford Brookes University)

Short abstract (300 characters):
Contributors will present concrete situations in which people start
loosing faith in the principles that organise their world. The goal of
this workshop is to analyse these moments when beliefs that used to be
consistent with their context seem irrelevant and generate conflictual
emotions.

Long abstract (250 words):
Contributors are invited to present concrete situations in which people
start loosing faith in the principles that used to organise their world,
question their support to institutions, or stop subscribing to normative
references and values. The goal of this workshop is to record these
moments when beliefs that used to be consistent with their context do not
match the new reality any more and generate conflictual emotions. How to
capture the manifestations of this inarticulate uncertainty just before it
develops into a crisis or ends in mere indifference?

We would like to investigate situations in which the legitimacy of a
political leader, a relative’s authority or a shaman’s power, starts
flickering. How does manifest the loss of confidence in the traditional
points of references? What do we learn from the ethnography of the
emergence of a new kind of sensitivity (growing distrust of medical
technology, disaffection with blood sacrifices in the Hindu world, etc.)?
How do people start questioning dominant or standard narratives (national
or community history, mythologies, ideologies) that seem to have lost
their relevance?

The anthropology of belief has mostly tried to make sense of various forms
of belief in their respective contexts. However the loss of consistency of
beliefs that is the prelude to social change, has remained largely
understudied. The presentation of ethnographic situations as diverse as
possible will help to find regularities in these moments of uncertainty
that generate as much anxiety as they are rich in new possibilities.

Chair: Isabelle Rivoal (LESC-CNRS)

Sent your abstracts via:
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2012/panels.php5?PanelID=1316

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