Dear colleagues,

A reminder that the deadline for applications to the SSRC's 2016 InterAsian
Connections workshops is Friday, September 8th. The workshops provide a
forum for close discussion of pre-circulated papers alongside plenary
discussions and keynotes; the SSRC meets a significant proportion of the
costs for selected workshop participants. The full list of workshops can be
found here, along with details on the application procedure:
http://www.ssrc.org/pages/interasian-connections-v-seoul-2016/

There are several workshops of interest to anthropologists, among them the
one that we are co-directing on 'Conviviality Beyond the Urban Center:
Theorizing the 'Marginal Hub''.  We welcome submissions from
anthropologists, historians and geographers whose work speaks to the
abstract below.  Applications should be made via the online submission
process:
http://www.ssrc.org/pages/interasian-connections-v-seoul-april-27-30-2016-application/.
We anticipate that the workshop will lead to a collective publication.

With best wishes,

Madeleine Reeves and Magnus Marsden
______________
*CALL FOR WORKSHOP PAPERS*Conviviality beyond the Urban Centre: Theorizing
the “Marginal Hub”


*Workshop directors**Magnus Marsden*
Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Sussex Asia Centre,
University of Sussex
[log in to unmask]

*Madeleine Reeves*
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Manchester
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------

How might we conceive of places of encounter with difference beyond the
major centers that have dominated the study of urbanism in Asia? What forms
of social interaction are to be found in such sites? And how are such hubs
connected to one another and to major urban centers? This workshop seeks to
answer these questions by foregrounding the empirical and conceptual
exploration of what we call ‘marginal hubs’ in diverse Asian contexts.

By ‘marginal hubs’ we denote sites that may be institutionally or
geographically remote from historic centers of urban sociality or political
power, but which are, or have been, places of interaction between people,
things, and ideas from diverse backgrounds. A non-exhaustive list of such
sites might include border markets, caravanserais, army bases, peri-urban
container camps, madrassas, ports, or the Soviet-era “village of urban
type” in which workers of diverse linguistic and confessional backgrounds
were posted to work in a single factory or mine. During the workshop we
will explore the modes of social interaction that are to be found in such
hubs, the forms of extraction and violence by which they may be
characterized in the present or past, as well as the distinct forms of
sociality or conviviality that may shape social life within and around
them. We enquire what role such hubs might play in the emergence of new
cultural expressions (for instance, in music, in manners and etiquette, in
rituals of politeness and hospitality, in food and consumption, in dress
and clothing) and the degree to which the forms of sociability found in
such hubs might be traced to settings beyond.

The workshop proceeds from a recognition that while there has been a
flourishing of literature on urban life in Asia on the one hand, and on
borders, frontiers and rural margins on the other, we know comparatively
little about those forms of sensibility and sociability that emerge in hubs
that may be remote from, or peripheral to, traditional urban centers. By
inviting historically and ethnographically informed papers that study
‘marginal hubs’ in diverse Asian settings, we seek to diversify and
unsettle the category of the ‘Asian urban’ and to draw attention to forms
of non-elite mobility that link diverse Asian hubs, including the movement
of soldiers, traders, construction workers, members of religious orders,
domestic workers, and engineers. We invite contributions from junior and
senior scholars from anthropology, history, geography and allied fields
that draw upon a close empirical analysis of hub(s) in one or more Asian
setting. We particularly welcome papers that speak to questions of
*connectivity*, *durability* or *comparability*by engaging one or more of
the following questions:

   - In what ways are marginal hubs connected both to one another and to
   major urban centers? What forms (infrastructural, imaginary, familial,
   personal) do such connections take? Are such marginal hubs dependent upon
   urban centers or do they exist in parallel to them? Are there regular forms
   of symbiosis and mutual dependency between them?
   - In what ways is it possible to historicize hubs in the margin? Are
   marginal hubs that apparently emerge almost overnight (e.g. container
   markets) actually informed by longer histories? How do hubs change through
   time, and what temporal scales might be helpful in thinking about this:
   linearity, cycles, stop-start transformations? In what ways do marginal
   hubs from the past (e.g. caravanserais, military bases, or border markets)
   maintain a place in the life of local communities even after decline? Has
   the state found it easier to suppress such hubs or to harness them?
   - Does the particular type of flow with which a hub is connected
   influence the nature of its dynamics, or is it possible to recognize
   similarities and parallels across apparently different kinds of marginal
   hub? For example, are hubs or religious learning different from or
   comparable to hubs of trade and commerce?

_____________________

Dr. Madeleine Reeves
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Manchester
Associate Editor, Central Asian Survey
<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccas20/current>

Social Anthropology | Arthur Lewis Building 2.054 | University of
Manchester | Oxford Road | Manchester M13 9PL, UK | +44 161 275 3488 |
madeleinereeves.net

*************************************************************
*           Anthropology-Matters Mailing List
*  http://www.anthropologymatters.com            *
* A postgraduate project comprising online journal,    *
* online discussions, teaching and research resources  *
* and international contacts directory.               *
* To join this list or to look at the archived previous       *
* messages visit:                                             *
* http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/Anthropology-Matters.HTML   *
* If you have ALREADY subscribed: to send a message to all    *
* those currently subscribed to the list,just send mail to:   *
*        [log in to unmask]                  *
*                                                             *
*       Enjoyed the mailing list? Why not join the new        *
*       CONTACTS SECTION @ www.anthropologymatters.com        *
*    an international directory of anthropology researchers
*
* To unsubscribe: please log on to jiscmail.ac.uk, and            *
* go to the 'Subscriber's corner' page.                                  *
*
***************************************************************