[URBANTH-L] CFP: Processes of Translation, Translations of Substance (Panel f or SCA Biennial Spring conference)

[Reddy, Deepa]

Call for Papers
"Translations of Value," Society for Cultural Anthropology Biennial Spring
Conference
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
May 5-6, 2006
<http://www.aaanet.org/sca/meetings/sca/2006/intro.htm>
Panel Organizers: Deepa Reddy, University of Houston-Clear Lake; Jennifer
Hamilton, Baylor College of Medicine
Panel Title: Processes of Translation, Translations of Substance
In keeping with the conference theme, we are interested in papers that
explore processes by which new translations of value are created, especially
those that apply to the production, circulation, and configuration of
substance in a broad anthropological sense (as "vital part or essence;
separate distinct thing; that which underlies phenomena; and corporeal
matter.")[1] While our own substantive interests in these processes emerge
from a collaborative project in the ethnography of human genetic variation
research and the circulation of genetic materials and knowledge, we are also
open to work that expands these themes beyond the specific realm of
bioscience. Topics might include:
*	The transformation of substance within shifting systems of value.
What kinds of agents, knowledge, and expertise are mobilized around
translations of value? For instance, how is it that certain
practices/processes are newly translated as 'ethical'? 
*	Renewed anthropological interest in 'older' traffics (e.g., by means
of kinship, women, gifts, commodities, fluids, etc) but as these traffics
compel novel things and persons. What are these compulsions, and how do they
work in contemporary contexts to produce new traffics, economies,
formulations, distinctions, and categories? 
*	Processes that work to reconfigure categories such as property,
ownership, and value in particular contexts (e.g., blood, organs,
culture/heritage, etc).
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words and brief biosketch (1-2
lines) to Jennifer Hamilton at jhamilto at bcm.edu <mailto:jhamilto at bcm.edu> by
December 23, 2005.

[1] Carsten, Janet
2001 Substantivism, Antisubstantivism, and Anti-antisubstantivism. In
Relative values: reconfiguring kinship studies. S. Franklin and S. McKinnon,
eds. pp. 29-53. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.