[CFP] “Material Asia” conference in Jeonju, Korea in August 2011

The joint 2011 conference between Society for East Asian Anthropology and Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology SEAA 2011 Conference will be held in the city of Jeonju, the culinary capital of South Korea, from August 1 to August 5, 2011. The deadline to propose an individual paper or panel presentation is March 31.

The conference theme is “Material Asia: Objects, Technologies and Rethinking Success.” From the website:

Our joint conference addresses and redresses the increasingly urgent subjects of technology, material culture, and conceptualizations of post-industrial “success” on local, national and global scales.

In the words of our initial proposal, our joint “conference assumes a broad awareness of the social effect of things in contemporary East Asian life and human responses to new technological and material possibilities: commodifications of all manner of life experiences from cultural performances and tourism to body parts, the transfer of technologies, the robotics industry and employment of robots in everyday life, expanded transnational markets in labor and brides, and the market-driven production of ideally productive, intelligent, and ‘beautiful people.’Consumption, including the literal consumption of food has assumed unprecedented forms. Local and regional responses and critiques of these possibilities are varied and often complex.”