Dear all,
This is an announcement and call for paper proposals for a session to be
held at the World Archaeological Congress in Washington DC, June 21-26,
2003 (abstract below). The session deals with the intersection between
recent discussions of agency in archaeology and human rights issues. Please
reply to this email if you are interested in taking part; for further
details of the Congress, please refer to the website at:
http://www.american.edu/wac5/
Best wishes,
Andrew Gardner and Stephanie Koerner
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Archaeology, Human Agency and Human Rights: Views Beyond the Privatization
of Ethics and the Globalization of Indifference
Organizers: Andrew Gardner (University College London) and Stephanie
Koerner (University of Manchester)
The last decade has seen considerable growth of interest in the concept of
'agency' in archaeology (e.g., Dobres and Robb 2000). Despite the diversity
of the recent literature motivated by this interest, two general bodies of
theory appear to have been especially influential. One might be summarized
under the expression, the 'critique of meta-narratives' (e.g., Adorno 1974;
Foucault 1980; Lyotard 1984; Bourdieu 1990), and the other centres on the
terms, 'globalisation and multi-culturalism' (e.g., Harvey 1989; Giddens
1990). Notably less attention has been given to the implications for
archaeological treatments of human agency of changes which are taking place
in international human rights law, and wider public discussion of human
rights (cf. Wilson ed., 1997; Cowan, Dembour, Wilson eds, 2001). Likewise
notable are tensions between some of the most influential archaeological
responses to the 'critique of meta-narratives', and the lack of attention
given to the implications of these tensions for archaeology's relevance to
wider human rights debates.
Two of the themes on which the most influential responses to the critique
of meta-narratives in archaeology centre may have particular bearing on
these issues. One is the critique of notions of a human self (subject) that
is prior to its embodied and material preconditions (c.f., Foucault 1980;
Bourdieu 1990). The other is the concern to focus attention on the
discrepant experiences of human agents (e.g., Said 1993; Miller ed., 1995;
Gero 2000). The former theme challenges approaches to the intentionality of
human behavior, which have been structured around a supposed gap between
the 'mental states' of individual subjects and an object world 'out there'.
The latter implies a complex range of questions, including: How might we
best reconceptualise intentionality, and human capacities to act
voluntarily (or to 'behave otherwise') (cf. Barnes 2000)? What makes it
possible for human agents to act against existing socio-historical
constraints, and to transform the circumstances from which these arise? Can
human experiences of discrepancies between how things are and how things
ought to be make a difference not just to particular events, but in
conjunctures that reconfigure the longue durée? (cf. Koerner 2002). New
ways to address the issues posed by these themes may be highly relevant to
the development of more satisfactory archaeological methods. They also may
initiate discussion of the ways in which archaeology has been influenced by
legal and public discourse on human rights, and of the contributions that
archaeology might be able to make to these debates.
One of the aims of this session is to examine the impacts on recent
archaeological treatments of 'agency' of not only (a) 'the critique of
meta-narratives' and models of (b) 'globalisation and multi-culturalism',
but also (c) cross-disciplinary and public discussions of human rights. The
session will include papers on approaches to human agency that seek to go
beyond the dualist categories on which the traditional meta-narratives
concerning human nature, history, knowledge and law hinge (including such
dichotomies as, universalism-relativism, subject-object, mind-body,
individual-society, western-non-western, science-values, and
epistemology-ontology). It seeks also to include case studies, which may
have bearing upon a better understanding of "the ongoing globalisation of
human rights" (cf. Wilson 1997: 3). This means the inclusion of case
studies of past "human life-worlds" (cf. Husserl ([1936] 1970)). Such goals
would seem to follow from Richard Wilson's argument that: "The intellectual
efforts of those seeking to develop a framework for understanding the
social life of rights would be better directed not towards foreclosing
their ontological status, but instead by exploring their meaning and use.
What is needed are more detailed studies of human rights according to the
actions and intentions of social actors, within wider historical
constraints of institutionalised power" (Wilson 1997: 3-4).
References
Adorno, T. 1974. Minima Moraia: Reflections from a Damaged Life, trans. by
E. F. N. Jephcott. London: Verso.
Barnes, B. 2000. Understanding Agency: Social Theory and Responsible
Action. London: SAGE Publications.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice, trans. by R. Nice. London: Polity
Press.
Cowan, J.K., Dembour, M.-B., and Wilson, R. A. (eds) 2001. Culture and
Rights:
Anthropological Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dobres, M. A. and Robb, J. (eds) 2000. Agency in Archaeology. London:
Routledge.
Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972-1977, trans. by L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K. Soper, C. Gordon (ed).
New York: Pantheon Books.
Giddens, A. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Gero, J. 2000. Troubled Travels in Agency and Feminism. In M. A. Dobres and
J. Robb (eds), Agency in Archaeology. London: Routledge, 34-39.
Harvey, D. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
Husserl, E. [1936] 1970. The Crisis of European Science and Transcendent
Phenomenology, trans. by D. Carr. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press.
Koerner, S. 2002. Globalisation, Multi-culturalism and the Prism of the
Local. A Session in the 2002 Meeting of the European Association of
Archaeologists, 24-29 September, 2002, Thessaloniki. World Archaeological
Bulletin 17.
Miller, D. (ed) 1995. Worlds Apart: Modernity through the Prism of the
Local. London: Routledge.
Lyotard, J.F. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans.
by G. Bennington and B. Massumai. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Said, E. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Wardus.
Wilson, R. A. 1997. Human Rights, Culture and Context: an introduction. In
R.A. Wilson (ed) Human Rights, Culture and Context. London: Pluto Press. 1-27.
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