Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the perpetuation of, and challenges towards, the intellectual illusion that people exist with incidental connection to the material world and explores the value of a discipline that draws people as materials into view. It asks: What is Anthropology for?

Paper long abstract:

If Anthropology was once the dubious, racist practice of ethnology, it certainly is not that any more. This paper asserts that Anthropology, rather than asking 'who are those 'others' over there?', should be attending to the future by asking not just 'who are we' but 'who do we (collectively) want to be?, together. In light of current planetary conditions, it appears apposite to dramatically reconsider what knowledge Anthropology wants to produce and where it wants to position itself as a discipline.

Most disciplines have been established by scholars schooled in perspectives that accept things exist in distinction from each other, and therefore, regardless of any material, physical or substantial challenges to this, continue to fashion the world into a place of separate entities, occupying and competing for space - with dramatic and destructive political and material consequences. This paper questions that perspective by demonstrating the material connections, associations and correspondences that bind people to each other and the rest of the material world.

Paper short abstract:

Cave environments are often perceived as containers from which knowledge is extracted. This perspective affects the way caves are researched and regulated, and how we interact with them. What changes can an Anthro-Materiality affect when put in conversation with the idea of nature as resource?

Paper long abstract:

Tucked away from the rest of the world, cave environments are often seen as worth managing or preserving because of the information they contain about our past, present and future. This perception of caves as knowledge resources tends to have an impact on how cave policy and research is developed and enacted, and informs everything from how we are supposed to interact with caves to who is allowed to have a say in what they become. Drawing on examples from my research with caving communities, I will explore how looking at the relationship between people and caves through a materiality lens can offer insights that have practical implications on how we relate to these environments. I will explore the questions: What may an Anthro-Materiality of people and caves look like? What changes can this perspective affect when put in conversation with knowledge systems that regulate cave environments as resources? And why does it matter?

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the prehistory of human interactions with the environment, during the formative stages of the Anthropocene. It explores how the comingling of humans and earthy matter forged a new material world in which humans increasingly viewed themselves as masters over matter.

Paper long abstract:

This paper interrogates some of the earliest documented evidence for intra-actions between human bodies and earthy matters and how this shaped and transformed the material world during what might be described as the formative stages of the Anthropocene. Looking at the Neolithic in the Near East it explores how daily entanglements of humans and earthy materials anchored people to place (particular points in the landscape) ‒ effectively describing a process in which people become (as described by Kate Feyers-Kerr 2019, 114) consubstantial: "cultivating a confederacy between communities and the earthy substances of place". This paper focuses on the vitality of earthy matter from a New Materialities perspective; it interrogates how the distinct capacities of clay/earth/mud provoked, enabled and constrained human behaviour and how the daily encounters between these substances and people created a new material world in which we became human. Pottery, figurines and houses were all crafted from mud, fire and water and these "phenomena" (Barad 2003) persist in the environment millennia after humans shaped them. Thus, this paper also argues that understanding early material entanglements and their impact upon ancient landscapes is of relevance to our current preoccupation with the detritus of the Anthropocene and the mark that humans leave/have left upon the world.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the interrelatedness between everyday unequal urbanization & microbiological/physicochemical changes experienced by stored water. By documenting human habits & the materiality of mosquito habitats, it reflects on ways of producing knowledge for sustainable futures.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2014 dengue, zika and chikungunya outbreaks have increased, becoming endemic in the urban South. Aedes aegypti, the primary vector for these diseases, breeds mainly in stored/stagnant water in tropical countries (Githeko et al., 2000). Studies have warned that climate change might be increasing the proliferation of the mosquito Aedes aegypti in new areas, as rising temperatures can affect the temperature and distribution of stagnant water (Hunter, 2003). Research has also identified urbanization as a major increaser of Aedes aegypti's larval habitats and an accelerator of mosquito survivorship. However, there is a pressing need to understand which elements of the urbanization process contribute to the ecological success of Aedes mosquitoes in urban South. This scenario calls on wider understandings of mosquito habitats and the ways in which people are shaped by mosquitoes. The case study of mosquito habitat prevalence in four neighborhoods of Maputo provides a platform to study mosquito borne diseases in contexts of urbanization. Ethnographic work, documenting everyday water-storage habits, and the assessment of mosquito habitats bring forward a novel contextualization of water, signaling the transformations water undergoes once it is stored inside people´s homes (and fostering mosquito larvae). This paper calls attention to the interrelatedness between socioeconomic contexts of unequal urbanization with microbiological and physicochemical changes of water, as it transforms into mosquito habitats once it gets stored inside households. Ultimately, by attending to the materiality of households, buckets, and mosquitoes, the paper explores ways of producing knowledge for sustainable futures.

Paper short abstract:

The paper is about the possibility of understanding miyas by using the lens of dress. Given their East-Bengal (now Bangladesh) origin, miyas are always seen as an outsider within the wider Assamese community of India. The acts of the miya othering plays out greatly through the miya sartorial tastes.

Paper long abstract:

Dress communicates a list of possible meaning. The dress may be a statement of gender, class, age, religion etc. Possibly because in most social encounters dress is seen before the conversation is initiated, and thereby have a certain priority over establishing of identity (Stone, 1962).

The paper is about the possibility of understanding miyas by using the material lens of dress and dressing. The miyas, East-Bengal origin Muslim migrants, has always been seen as the outsider in the post-colonial Assam. In this process of othering the miyas dress forms an integral part. The way the miyas typically dress is a reminder of their East-Bengal origin. The colourful cotton sarees of the women and the brightly stripped lungis of the miya men become the site of their exclusion. The aestheticization of bright and colourfulness, builds a sense of taste for attire, which delineates from the popular dress and adornment of the 'native' Assamese population. Dress explicitly makes a miyas easily distinguishable from the khilonjia oxomiyas (native Assamese). It defines the miyas. The paper is based on fieldwork in the Kira Kara char of Darrang district in Assam. It stands as prefatory but important attempt to locate dress as a lens to comprehend the lived experiences of the miyas, given that dress is usually seen as something inconsequential element and beyond the need of serious scholarly attention while talking about the contested identity of the miyas of Assam.