[URBANTH-L]Call for Papers "Race and Anthropology, Race in Anthropology"

[Daromir Rudnyckyj]

KAS Special-Theme Issue
Call for Papers
10/31/2005

In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois remarked that the problem of the twentieth century
would be the problem of the colorline. In many ways, the colorline-or race,
its metonymic referent-is also the problem of the twenty-first. Given the
resurgence of biologized race in genomics and "ethnic designer drugs," the
nineteenth and early twentieth century concepts of race that anthropology
played a central role in creating and deconstructing continue to be salient.
Despite our discipline's mantra that race is a "social construct," race
continues to be a social reality, whether or not it is conceptualized in
explicitly biological terms. The rebiologization of race provides
anthropologists-from all four fields-an opportunity to
reinitiate/reinvigorate an intradisciplinary conversation on race-as well as
an interdisciplinary one. Moreover, the resurgence of biologized race also
presents an opportunity for anthropology as a discipline to intervene in
public conversations on race from which meaningful anthropological
contributions have been all too often absent.  In this spirit, this issue of
the Kroeber Anthropological Society (KAS) Papers seeks to think, and rethink
race, race and anthropology, and race in anthropology. Can anthropology as a
discipline speak with one proverbial voice? Is this even desirable? And why
have intradisciplinary discussions of race receded to the margins? Then
again, have intradisciplinary discussions of race receded? The recent
bifurcations of anthropology departments into biological and cultural
anthropology departments as well as the growing number of anthropologists in
interdisciplinary departments are signs that for significant segments of the
discipline a four-field approach has been abandoned, or, at the very least,
had its utility, feasibility, and desirability put in question.
Interestingly, it is precisely at this moment of fissure that the four
fields may have the most to say to each other, if only on the concept of
race. American anthropology was founded in the Boasian tradition, and Boas
himself critically interrogated the linking of race, language and culture.
In many ways, race is the concept that has bound the discipline together. If
nothing else, anthropologists should ask if this continues to be the case.
So this issue of the KAS Papers invites anthropologists from all four fields
to revisit the issue of race, both in its salience inside of the discipline
and its potency outside the academy. What do anthropologists have to say
about race? What do anthropologists have to say to each other about race?
And what is "race" anyway?



Submissions are due February 1, 2006
Please send two paper copies and one electronic copy (MS Word) to:
Kroeber Anthropological Society
232 Kroeber Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720

Papers should be no more than 11000 words (30 pgs, double-spaced).
Electronic copies can be mailed on a 3.5" diskette or CD to the above
address. For format guidelines, please refer to the AAA style guide or the
KAS website at http://sscl.berkeley.edu/~kas/submission.html.

For further information, contact: Marian Swanzy-Parker -
mariansp at berkeley.edu