Political anthropology of citizenship and the urge for alternatives
European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) 2024 Biennial Conference
Published on Thursday, January 04, 2024
Abstract
This panel, proposed by the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) network “Anthropology and Social Movements”, is part of an ongoing discussion about how a political anthropology perspective on citizenship can provide new ways of practicing anthropology without losing the politic(s) of the fieldwork when looking for “alternatives”.
Announcement
Argument
From an anthropological perspective, the use of ‘‘citizenship’’ as an analytical tool serves a critical purpose: looking for alternative practices of citizenship in order to notice and better understand ongoing global ‘‘crisis’’ from a local and political perspective and unravel the normative knots of our own way of understanding citizenship processes. Such a task is often put to work to address the ‘‘politics of future(s)’’ through the account of the ‘‘political possibilities’’ woven into alternative practices of citizenship. Yet, what looking for such ‘‘alternatives’’ does to anthropology as a craft?
Lately, many anthropologists of social movements have been using Engin Isin’s notion of “acts of citizenship” in order to grasp such alternatives. Those uses rest on varying implicit set of normative rules – mainly conflicting with Isin’s theory (Roy and Neveu 2023) – deriving from normative shifts rarely discussed by anthropologists. Only by addressing these shifts can we critically engage with the politic(s) of anthropology, understood as a craft in the making.
A political anthropology perspective would suggest these shifts should be justified by the politic(s) of the fieldwork. Not doing so, we risk reducing our field to our own desire of extracting ‘‘alternative(s)’’ and losing the very meanings in which the ‘‘crisis’’ is being dealt with in a ''citizenshiply'' manner on the field. We would suggest that the category of ‘‘ordinariness’’ (Neveu 2015) might play as a significative analytical tool to prevent such a reduction.
We expect proposals to question the normativities anthropologists have about citizenship when looking for ''alternatives''.
Submission guidelines
The call for papers for the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) 2024 Biennial Conference, which will be held in Barcelona from the 23rd to the 26th of July, is now open.
If you are interested in presenting your paper at the Anthropology and Social Movements Network panel (P048), entitled "Political anthropology of citizenship and the urge for alternatives’’, please submit your abstract to co-convenors through the following link : https://nomadit.co.uk/account/contact/login
before January 22, 2024.
Convenors
- Martin Roy (Laboratoire d'anthropologie politique (LAP-EHESS-CNRS), Joint PhD EHESS (Paris) - University of Ottawa)
- Elena Apostoli Cappello (La Sapienza University of Rome)
- Piotr Goldstein (Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS))
Chair
Catherine Neveu (IIAC (CNRS-EHESS))
Subjects
Places
- University of Barcelona - Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585, L'Eixample
Barcelona, Kingdom of Spain (08007)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Monday, January 22, 2024
Keywords
- political anthropology, citizenship, alternative, ordinary
Contact(s)
- Elena Apostoli Cappello
courriel : elena [dot] apostolicappello [at] uniroma1 [dot] it - Martin ROY
courriel : Mroy [dot] uottawa [at] gmail [dot] com - Piotr Goldstein
courriel : piotrgoldstein [at] gmail [dot] com
Reference Urls
Information source
- Martin ROY
courriel : Mroy [dot] uottawa [at] gmail [dot] com
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Political anthropology of citizenship and the urge for alternatives », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, January 04, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/ve7n