[URBANTH-L] CFP: "Engaging Engagement"-Soc. for Latin American and CaribbeanAnth, Merida, Spring 2010

[Allan Charles Dawson]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology: SLACA 2010  
SPRING CONFERENCE, MARCH 24-27, 2010, IN
MERIDA, MEXICO

The Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology will hold its
Second Annual Spring Conference, along with the Society for Applied
Anthropology, in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, under the theme  
"Vulnerabilities
and Exclusion in Globalization."


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ENGAGING ENGAGEMENT IN LATIN AMERICA IDENTITY POLITICS: FROM  
ANTHROPOLOGICAL ACTIVISM TO THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF ACTIVISM

Engaged anthropology exhorts practitioners of the discipline to tear  
down the walls in both our research and in our classrooms; that we  
should all, in and through our work, strive to be activists. To be  
sure, anthropology’s history of working closely with non-Western  
societies—those that have often borne the brunt of such oppression— 
behooves us to be ever-vigilant and mindful that our research is not  
used to further or maintain conditions wrought by colonialism, racism,  
sexism or global capitalism. Engaged anthropology challenges us to— 
when possible—to take up the cause of these peoples and bring the  
unique methodological and theoretical approaches of anthropology to  
bear in aiding the communities in which we live and work. Frequently,  
this means helping communities to redefine their identity—ethnic,  
religious, political, ecological and economic—vis-à-vis national  
governments, state ideologies, international development policies and  
legal frameworks in order to gain access to resources, status and  
land. These redefinitions can result in the rewriting of histories,  
traditions, memories and collective identities in response to changes  
in government policy, new constitutions, or external pressures.

The present panel seeks papers that critically examine the role of  
activist approaches in reconstructing historical identities and  
memories in the Latin American and Caribbean context—from indigenous  
peoples to victims of despotic governments to the descendants of  
maroon slave communities.

Moreover, it specifically seeks papers that questions this approach to  
activist anthropology that privileges political and social objectives— 
however commendable—over theoretical, and epistemological concerns.

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Abstracts should be sent by October 15, 2009 to Allan Dawson,  
Department of Anthropology, Drew University (adawson at drew.edu) or Ari  
Gandsman, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of  
Ottawa (agandsman at gmail.com)

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Allan C. Dawson, Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
Drew University
36 Madison Aveune
Madison, NJ, 07940, United States.

Phone: +1.973.408.3292 / Fax: +1.973.679.2821