March 31 – April 2, 2016
Washington D.C.
Incoherence: Disorder, Normativity, Anthropology
Anthropology is about assembling worlds. Despite that impulse to order, much of cultural anthropology today reveals the disorderly, messy, and unstable social terrains upon which our research often unfolds. Precarity, insecurity, disorder and uncertainty are common themes in recent theorizing on intersubjectivity and sexuality, politics, economics and culture on every scale — personal, local, national, transnational and global. Matters of war, conflict, violence, and abuse remain the objects of anthropological attention, joined by concerns with the decay, mutation, or failure of institutions, formations, processes, and beliefs that once seemed constant and reliable.
Studies of migration and mobility, like other work in the anthropology of globalization and transnationalism, point to the importance of movement and change in contemporary contexts, against the kinds of ordered stability that preoccupy the imaginations and memories of states and their agents, as they often do the practitioners of other academic disciplines. Meanwhile, anthropological studies of borders, of legal ordering, of sexuality and queer identity, of infrastructure, personhood, citizenship, and alienation force us to consider the ways in which older ways of making order fight to maintain relevance in a changing world.
The anthropology of medicine and health, of language, of science and technology, of religion and the family – all reveal the many ways in which a lack of normative consistency characterizes human behavior, social interaction, and cultural production. What if incoherence, rather than order and completeness, better characterizes contemporary social life? Papers and panels are invited for a conference that concerns itself with incoherence, however conceived – as instability, contingency, transition, incompleteness, inconsistency, chaos, or in other ways. Work that plays with normative conventions of anthropological expression – that is itself incoherent, while still being insightful – is especially welcome.
The 2016 AES spring conference will be held in Washington, D.C., March 31-April 2, 2016 at the Liaison Capitol Hill, a short walk from Union Station.
Organizer: Daniel M. Goldstein (Rutgers University)
New Panelist added for this Thursday night’s reception and book event at the Busboys and Poets bookstore on “Homeland Insecurity: Anthropologists Discuss Terror, Corruption, and Displacement.” Come hear Susan Terrio (Georgetown U), author of Whose Child am I? Unaccompanied, Undocumented Children in U.S. Immigration Custody. Susan joins Catherine Besteman, Joseph Masco, and Janine Wedel, and moderator Deborah Thomas.
Workshops for Graduate Students
The AES Spring 2016 conference will host four workshops for graduate students. Enrollment will be capped, so participants are encouraged to sign up as soon as possible.
- Four-Field Anthropology: Jobs, Publishing, and Future Prospects of the Discipline
Host: Jason de Léon, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan Thursday, March 31, 2:00-4:00 PM Cap: 6
In this open conversation, participants will discuss the current state of holism in anthropology and the realities of trying to cross sub-disciplinary boundaries in field work, publications, and the job market with Jason De León, the Director of the Undocumented Migration Project and author of The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. - Finding Your Voice: On Clarity and Confidence in Ethnographic Writing
Host: Carole McGranahan, Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado Thursday, March 31, 2:00-4:00 PM Cap:10
Anthropologists are writers, and yet, what sort of writers are we? What sort of writers should we be? In this workshop, we will explore the process of writing in anthropology through the concept of one’s writing voice. Having clarity and confidence in one’s writing is not just a matter of knowing what you want to say, but also knowing your material, knowing that you have stories to share and arguments to make that matter. Whether it is sinking into ethnographic detail or theoretical argument, the development of one’s writing voice involves trust that ideas are generated during the writing process itself. Writing is not just the instrumental conveying of ideas, but the creative generation and development of them. As such, one’s writing voice is a part of one’s ethnographic sensibility, one’s ethnographic sense of people and the world and relationships and struggles and stories and more. Part of our work will include asking questions such as: When do you feel most confident as a writer? How has your writing changed over time? What writing inspires you? Following from these questions, and our collective discussion of ethnographic writing, participants will share their writing as well as engage in hands-on practices designed to illuminate and strengthen one’s own writing voice. - Getting your Article Published
Host: Niko Besnier, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Universiteit van Amsterdam Editor-in-Chief, American Ethnologist Thursday, March 31, 2:00-4:00 PM Cap: 10
For many scholars who are getting started in their academic careers, how to get an article published is fraught with mystery and anxiety-provoking. This workshop aims to dispel some of the mystery and alleviate some of the anxiety. Focusing in particular on our journal American Ethnologist, we will analyze argument structure, the relationship between theory and ethnography, issues of voice, and the practical aspects of writing and submitting an article manuscript that will sail through the review process.americanethnologist.org - Grant Writing and Grant Funding at the NSF
Host: Jeffrey W. Mantz, Program Director, Cultural Anthropology Program, NSF Saturday, April 2, 2:00-4:00 PM Cap: 10
In this workshop, participants will receive instruction in preparing grant proposals for dissertation and postdoctoral field research, with a special emphasis on applying to the National Science Foundation. Grant funding opportunities for cultural anthropologists at the NSF will also be covered. Beginning and experienced grant seekers will benefit greatly from this session.
Keynote Speakers
Thursday: Jason de Léon (University of Michigan)
“Total Chaos, Extreme Boredom, and Everyday Violence: The (In)Coherence of a Four-Field Approach to Undocumented Migration”
The social process of undocumented Latino migration is often characterized as either routinized or haphazard, a dichotomy that tends to privilege either macroscale analysis devoid of ethnographic nuance or first person narratives that overemphasize the noble suffering of border crossers. In this talk I argue that much can be learned about clandestine migration from Latin America to the United States through a four-field approach. However, the new insights that arise from this holistic endeavor also challenge pre-conceived notions about migration and what it means to be a “migrant”, undermine our analytical and theoretical ability to bring satisfactory order to this social process, and illustrate the difficulty and contradictions of practicing a four-field anthropology in the 21st century.
Jason de Léon is an assistant p