[URBANTH-L]proposed panel for AAA 2009 - Transnational Households: Transformations in Personhood and Consumption

[Erin Kenny]

Please circulate:

 

I'm hoping to put together a panel for the AAA in December in
Philadelphia.

 

 

Proposed Panel - AAA 2009, Philadelphia

Transnational Households:  Transformations in Personhood and Consumption

 

Ethnographic studies have long conducted household-level analyses to
suggest that personhood is shaped and influenced by foundational kin
relationships and practices of consumption within the natal household.
This panel adds to that discussion by looking more closely at the
extended households of transnational migrants - possibly including their
parents, their siblings, their partners, and their children or
grandchildren - and asking how we can understand emerging transnational
strategies of subject formation that link labor/work practices,
remittance/gifting obligations, and/or leisure practices with identity
production in a global economy.   Many transnational migrants return to
their natal household permanently, or perhaps only seasonally, or
perhaps simply for a visit.  Many transnational migrants also
communicate regularly with households of origin through remittances,
gifts, telephone calls, or internet contact.  Of particular interest to
this panel is how natal households continue to be an active site of
identity (or personhood) construction in the lives of transnational
migrants, and how resources are strategically channeled to (or, perhaps
strategically "hidden" away from) natal households during periods of
successful transnational migration.  

 

Papers on this panel may include - but are not limited to!! -
ethnographically-specific, personally-nuanced, and/or rich theoretical
discussions of any of the following topics:

 

*          considerations of gender and inter-generationality
(including notions of birth order)

*         intergenerational obligations (gifting, remittances, conjugal
obligations)

*         transformations in the decision process for migration or
return to natal households

*         "second generation returnees," or generation 1.5 members, who
are born (and raised?) in locations different from those of their
parents

*         childhood or adolescence abroad (bilinguality, education,
social capital) and the natal household

*         effects of waged labor on remittance or gifting expectations

*         transformation of marriage, wedding, or co-habitation patterns

*         transformations in sexual practices, sexual identity, and/or
birth control techniques

*         transformations in death practices, including funerals

*         strategies for raising children away from an extended family
structure

*         modes of communication with home community

*         effects of technology on familial relationships

*         effects of biomedical interventions on familial relationships

*         claims of increased "(im)morality" for migrant household
members; corruption or contamination of "personhood"

*         transformations in personal "style," including clothing, hair,
embodied practices

*         interpretations of advanced education/social capital by natal
communities; interpretations of natal communities by migrants

 

 

If you're interested in submitting a paper to the panel, please contact
me with a 250 word proposal by email as soon as possible, but ideally
before March 29.  

 

 

ekenny at drury.edu

 

 

Submission to the AAA requires payment of dues and conference fee prior
to April 1 at 5 pm.  

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

Erin Kenny, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Interdisciplinary Studies Center

Drury University

334 Burnham Hall

Springfield, MO 65802

 

(417) 873-7226

http://www.drury.edu/multinl/story.cfm?ID=15311&NLID=53
<http://www.drury.edu/multinl/story.cfm?ID=15311&NLID=53>