[URBANTH-L]Session at SCA meeting, May 5-6, Milwaukee

[Bill New]

    Dear colleagues, 
          We are at the last moment putting together a session for  the Society for Cultural Anthropology meeting in Milwaukee this May and would welcome  participants or a discussant. 
              TITLE (DRAFT)
  EXTRA-VAGANT COSMOMES IN ETHNOGRAPHIC RELIEF: THE UNEVEN  AND SHIFTING LANDSCAPES OF NATIONALISM AND LOCALISM
                  Papers in this session are organized around James Boon's  employment of "extra Vagance" (1999) (roughly: a condition whereby  words (and thoughts) defy the requirements of established modes of expression)  to describe "Cosmomes" or cosmopolitan moments. Boon's descriptions  index problems inherent in attempting to explain complex phenomena via  simplistic, reductive generalizations. Offering a perspective of constantly  shifting categories of meanings by itself will result in unnecessary confusion.  Rather, our intention is to illustrate the complexities involved in social life  through our analyses. Papers will address translations (and failures of translation)  of cosmopolitan moments by which people and things bind themselves and others  into networks and variously evaluate and qualify their ongoing relations? Thus  far, papers represent ethnographic research conducted with the Roma of Eastern  Europe and Latino Middle school students in the US.  In both cases,
 cultural/institutional  frameworks utilized to maintain local/national identities are analyzed with  regard to acts of symbolic violence (e.g.,failures of one sort or another).
  Interested participants should contact James Mullooly <jmullooly at csufresno.edu>  or Bill New (newb at beloit.edu) immediately. ABSTRACT DEADLINE: January 1st.