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- Convenors:
-
Noel Dyck
(Simon Fraser University)
Jon Mitchell (Sussex University)
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- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- V214
- Sessions:
- Thursday 12 July, -, Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
This workshop will examine the ways in which anthropological teaching and research are being reshaped in different countries by administrative and bureaucratic pressures that call for greater interdisciplinary and evidence of the likely 'impact' of the knowledge to be produced by our research.
Long Abstract:
In many countries the conditions and purposes of anthropological teaching and research are being reshaped by administrative and bureaucratic pressures that call for greater interdisciplinarity as well as evidence of the likely 'impact' of the knowledge to be produced by our research. Although individual anthropologists have at different times chosen to participate in interdisciplinary research and teaching projects, what was once optional is in some places becoming expected practice. Anthropologists are also being pressured in some jurisdictions to form partnerships with community, government, and business groups in order to generate what is often termed as more 'practical' forms of knowledge that can be applied beyond the academy.
This workshop will consider the sources and forms of such initiatives as well as their implications for anthropological research and/or teaching in a range of national and institutional settings. How, indeed, are anthropologists responding to these types of pressures and 'opportunities?' What is involved in seeking to reconcile anthropological research with the analytical concerns and methodological preferences of those working within other disciplines and/or the priorities of those in business, government, and/or the non-profit sectors? How might the logistical and intellectual arrangements generated by these types of undertakings shape the professional activities of anthropologists who enter into these by choice or necessity? What are the risks and rewards both for individual anthropologists as well as for the discipline as a whole that are associated with reshaping the conditions of anthropological practice?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 12 July, 2012, -Noel Dyck (Simon Fraser University)
Paper short abstract:
Anthropologists have frequently engaged in interdisciplinary teaching and research. Nevertheless, recent institutional demands for increased interdisciplinarity raise questions about the implications of this development for the sustainability of anthropology as a distinct discipline.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropologists have cumulatively registered a long and varied history of working across the boundaries of their discipline with a range of academic and non-academic collaborators and interlocutors. Recently, however, the mounting of interdisciplinary undertakings in research and teaching has shifted from being a situational and optional arrangement to an institutional imperative within universities in Canada and elsewhere. This presentation will examine the implications of this shift for anthropologists.
What, indeed, are the types of claims and objectives furnished in support of this institutional demand for increased interdisciplinarity? How has interdisciplinary work shaped anthropology in the past, and why wouldn't anthropology be well placed to respond positively and to benefit from this new demand for interdisciplinarity? These and other questions concerning the diverse implications of increased interdisciplinarity will be examined with reference to the author's experience of teaching in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary programs in Canada and of conducting ethnographic research in a field - namely, that of sport and childhood - that is located at the intersection of a number of disciplines and non-academic institutions. Can anthropology that is taught and practised in these settings retain its characteristic qualities? Can anthropology remain sustainable as a distinctive and vital discipline in a time of prescribed interdisciplinarity?
Jean-Yves Durand (CRIA-UMinho)
Paper short abstract:
The current popular, political and economical interest in "heritage" allows for a renewed dialogue between anthropology and museology: what are the possibilities and the consequences of this new context?
Paper long abstract:
Having played a central role in anthropology's early years and being known as its first institutional stronghold, the ethnographic museum has had a less prominent role in the discipline lately. It has been a place of experimentation, but more often as the object of a reflexive questioning of instituted practices than as an instrument of proactive theoretical innovation. And the present life of European ethnographic museums is
oriented by a range of intermingled uncertainties: financial constraints, institutional reorganization, seemingly unavoidable (albeit often expensive, unreliable and distractive) new information technologies, blurred social role, debates about "deaccession", theoretical irresolution, discursive hesitations…
At the same time, the current popular, political and economical interest in "heritage" allows for a renewed dialogue between anthropology and museology. Its conditions and implications are as diverse as ethnographic museums can get in terms of institutional setting, size, social functions, scientific background or goals. But, besides the injunctions to produce "applied" research, the strong expectations that result in, and are fostered by heritagization - and cultural commodification -- undoubtedly bring these two fields to again more closely share common grounds.
A two-year experience away from teaching and as director of a State-sponsored ethnographic museum in North-eastern Portugal provides a standpoint on the predicaments inherent to this new context. It stresses the possibilities and difficulties encountered in an attempt at leading anthropological practice back to the museum and, beyond it, towards more dynamic perplexity, creative disquiet and social relevance.
Christine Jourdan (Concordia University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper reflects on the complexities and challenged linked to the practice of bidisciplinarity in an academic career.
Paper long abstract:
This paper looks at the travails and (minor) triumphs associated with working in two disciplines, (linguistics and anthropology) which the author embraces freely and finds enriching. Reflecting on her academic practice spanning the last 25 years, the author reflects on how her engagement with linguistics has been shaped and challenged by anthropology and vice-versa. As a Passe-Muraille, someone who straddles the disciplinary boundaries, she analyzes the costs, risks and advantages of working from two disciplinary perspectives at a time when university administrators in North America are discovering and promoting bi-disciplinarity and multidisciplinarity as an academic must.
Susana Carro-Ripalda (University of the Basque Country and Independent Researcher)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the epistemological and ethical boundaries between evaluations of public health programmes and anthropological knowledge. It explores the limitations in the production of "knowledge" in the context of differing intentionalities, and the ethical quandaries involved in turning an "anthropological gaze" on professional partners.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the epistemological and ethical boundaries, continuities and ruptures which lay between the tasks of carrying out interdisciplinary and collaborative evaluations of public health programmes and producing anthropological knowledge. Through the example of an ethnographic evaluation of a tobacco control programme carried out by academic anthropologists, the paper explores the difficulties implicit in negotiating the very notion of "knowledge" between interdisciplinary and non-academic partners (who might conceive it as "evidence" or "data") and the epistemological limitations -and perhaps liberations- imposed to the form and nature of such "knowledge" by differing intentionalities: is this, or can it ever be, anthropological knowledge? At the same time, the paper investigates the ethical quandaries involved in turning collaborators into objects of investigation themselves, and interrogates the inevitability and appropriateness of applying an "anthropological gaze" to all our professional undertakings: are we what we do, or can we mould what we do to serve other (public) purposes?
Evelyn Plaice (University of New Brunswick)
Paper short abstract:
Concluding a four-year language revitalisation and Elder knowledge project with First Nations colleagues, I reflect on the anticipated and the unexpected complexities of working across 21st century cultural boundaries in light of intellectual property protection.
Paper long abstract:
The Wolastoqiy live in seven communities along the Saint John River valley. Their name means 'people of the beautiful river.' With colleagues at the University of New Brunswick, I received funding to record speakers of their endangered language. Many Elder speakers welcomed our initiative. On the basis of their support we began the Research Ethics Review process necessary to release the funds. Thus began a frustrating journey of negotiation. At its heart lie the complex issues of intellectual property rights: who has them, who benefits, and ultimately who gets to practise anthropology in First Nations communities. Intellectual property rights are of vital significance for anthropologists practising ethnography in the 21st century. We have recently emerged from deep self reflexion of the relations of power that gave Native traditional knowledge into the hands of non-Native researchers with little control over how that knowledge was used. My concern matches that of my Aboriginal colleagues since the ability to conduct ethnographic research is the lifeblood of my discipline. Our experience was, however, that processes of protection as often stagnate attempts at knowledge revitalisation as protect them. During our research, we attended funerals as often as interviews: Elders were dying and taking with them a lifetime of experience that they had asked us to help them pass on. And we were unable to do so. My paper is an attempt to further the discussion of intellectual property protection in the context of ethnographic practise. We need to find better ways of practising our craft.
Julia Carolino (CIAUD - School of Architecture, University of Lisbon)
Paper short abstract:
A discussion will be made of how anthropological research on the mutual constitution of place and people in a migrant squatter settlement in Greater Lisbon transforms and is transformed by multidisciplinary research meant to have an impact on a public initiative for urban regeneration.
Paper long abstract:
The paper deals with urban regeneration in a migrant squatter settlement located in the area of Greater Lisbon, where many inhabitants are originally from Cape Verde. There is a spatial dimension in the current construction of Cape Verdean identities in Portugal, specifically in what regards labor migrants and their descent, which are in important ways associated to particular bairros of Greater Lisbon. However, differently from what occurs with other cultural expressions, which concretize a positive sense of a 'Lusophone multiculturality' (such as music), under the impact of public action towards the legalization of squatter settlements, engagements with self-constructed homes are predominantly dominated by issues of spatial illegibility, over-densification and an unsafe environment. A very concrete consequence of this is a focus on demolitions as way to carry on urban regeneration.
The paper takes issue with an anthropological approach to physical space in relation to the mutual constitution of place and personal subjectivities and considers the engagement of anthropology in action-oriented research aiming at the articulation of criteria for public intervention that may challenge a dominant focus on urban regeneration as the abstract conformation to legal norms. Additionally, it aims to provide a concrete example for discussing how such an engagement may transform anthropology.
Jon Mitchell (Sussex University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the impact of the introduction of Impact as a measure of research quality within British Social Anthropology. Whilst measuring Impact threatens to instrumentalise its research agenda, it might also expand the discipline’s public engagement.
Paper long abstract:
UK Higher Education has become something of a pioneer in the development of Audit Culture within the sector. One of its more recent innovations is the introduction of a measure of Impact in the Research Excellence Framework - a national audit of research quality, due to take place in 2013/14. This paper explores the potential and actual impact of the introduction of Impact as a measure of research quality, for Social Anthropology. On the one hand, it has the potential to expand out Social Anthropology's engagement with public audiences of various types; on the other, it threatens to instrumentalise the discipline's research agenda. The paper traces the ongoing debate about Impact within British Social Anthropology.
Caroline Knowles (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers some of the ways in which the fuzzy logics of 'social impact' are reconfiguring the production of anthropology and micro-sociology within and beyond the academy.
Paper long abstract:
'Social impact' has become a way of assessing academic performance with ambitions to measure it. It has a heightened significance in the UK in the run up to the 2013 REF where impact has a greater effect on REF 'scores' than publications. This move towards justifying the public uses and benefits of universities ironically arrives just as they have effectively been privatized: no longer entirely a public good universities must nevertheless serve the public good. This paper considers some of the ways in which these fuzzy logics are reconfiguring the production of anthropology and micro-sociology within and beyond the academy.