Tag Archive for anthropology

CFP: Rethinking inheritance — New School Anthropology Conference, New York

01/22/2012 FYI No comments

Continuing with the pre­vi­ous post’s inter­est in “crit­i­cal her­itage stud­ies,” here’s another inter­est­ing CFP address­ing “inher­i­tance” in mul­ti­ple reg­is­ters and encour­ag­ing the sub­mis­sion of provocative/generative “objects” along­side a brief state­ment. Great CFP for­mat for a con­fer­ence that in part attempts to re-imagine “the con­fer­ence for­mat that we have inher­ited as scholars.”

Call for Participants
The New School for Social Research
2012 Anthropology Conference: “Rethinking Inheritance“
April 28th, 2012
http://​inher​i​tance​con​fer​ence​.word​press​.com

Keynote Speaker: Gil Anidjar (Religion/MESAAS, Columbia)

Closing Remarks: Miguel Robles-Duran (Urban Design, Parsons The New School for Design)

The Theme: Inheritance has typ­i­cally been con­ceived as a pas­sive process of recep­tion. Yet, inher­i­tance also implies claims to some­thing. Claiming inher­i­tance and claim­ing selves, com­mu­ni­ties, nations and other units as heirs is an active prac­tice. How can we bet­ter con­cep­tu­al­ize the labor involved in estab­lish­ing inher­i­tance? How are inher­i­tances rejected, resisted, renewed, reformed, or rene­go­ti­ated? How are iden­tity and belong­ing impli­cated in inheritance?

As we begin to think of inher­i­tance in mul­ti­ple reg­is­ters, we hope to chal­lenge its sup­posed pas­siv­ity and expand its con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion. What does it mean to inherit a cit­i­zen­ship, a nation­al­ity, a legal frame­work, or an eth­nic­ity, and what are the modes for these inher­i­tances? How can inher­i­tance be employed to think through tem­po­ral rela­tion­ships of his­tor­i­cal con­scious­ness, col­lec­tive mem­ory, and their nar­ra­tion? We also hope to think together about how active inher­i­tance relates to mate­ri­al­i­ties and economies, finan­cial insti­tu­tions, and the act of mak­ing claims on prop­er­ties, whether vir­tual or phys­i­cal. Similarly, we can con­sider inher­i­tance in terms of spaces and bound­aries, won­der­ing how ter­ri­to­ries are passed down and how bor­ders are main­tained. Read more

Anthropology of Christianity bibliographic blog

10/11/2011 FYI No comments

There’s a new resource being put together by James Bielo (Miami University, Ohio) and Jon Bialecki (UCSD): AnthroCyBib, the “Anthropology of Christianity Bibliographic blog.” According to an announce­ment on The Society for the Anthropology of Religion email list:

This ‘blog’ is intended to be a resource for those who wish to keep track of arti­cles, book chap­ters, and mono­graphs that are a part of, in dia­logue with, or of inter­est to, the Anthropology of Christianity, which is one of the fastest grow­ing sub-disciplines in con­tem­po­rary anthro­pol­ogy. Because Christianity is attract­ing so much ethno­graphic and the­o­ret­i­cal atten­tion, keep­ing track of what is hap­pen­ing is becom­ing increas­ingly dif­fi­cult. For this rea­son we thought it would be of value to have a sin­gle site where rel­e­vant mate­r­ial could be announced as it came out, and searched via sev­eral tags (author, geo­graphic area, vari­ant of Christianity, and the­o­ret­i­cal focus).

In essence, this is akin to a tmblr style blog where we’ll post new mate­r­ial as we become aware of it. With time, we hope­fully will work on cre­at­ing a back cat­a­log of mate­r­ial pub­lished prior to 2011 as well.

If you’d like to con­tact either of us directly in order to alert us to new pub­li­ca­tions, pro­vide feed­back, or for any other rea­son, feel free to send us an email. Jon Bialecki can be con­tacted at jbialecki@​ucsd.​edu; James Bielo can be reached at bielojs@​muohio.​edu.

Tenure Guidelines in Applied Anthropology

06/13/2011 FYI No comments

Sure wish the AAG would sup­port some­thing sim­i­lar for geography!

From Inside Higher Ed: “The American Anthropological Association has released guide­lines for eval­u­at­ing fac­ulty mem­bers who work in applied anthro­pol­ogy, includ­ing pub­lic inter­est and com­mu­nity work. The guide­lines sug­gest that fac­ulty mem­bers can be eval­u­ated on grounds beyond tra­di­tional research pub­li­ca­tions, while still apply­ing rigor to reviews. Similar dis­cus­sions in the fields of his­tory and soci­ol­ogy have encour­aged broader def­i­n­i­tions within tenure reviews of con­tri­bu­tions to a discipline.”

Evaluating Scholarship on Practicing, Applied, Public Interest and Engaged Anthropology Through Tenure and Promotion

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) rec­og­nizes the grow­ing num­ber of anthro­pol­o­gists who iden­tify as prac­tic­ing, applied, pub­lic inter­est, or engaged anthro­pol­o­gists. Departments of anthro­pol­ogy and their home col­leges are thus chal­lenged with doc­u­ment­ing and eval­u­at­ing the schol­arly nature of this type of work in fac­ulty pro­mo­tion and tenure deci­sions. Accordingly, the AAA offers the fol­low­ing guide­lines devel­oped for depart­men­tal and col­lege T&P com­mit­tees for the eval­u­a­tion of schol­ar­ship in the realm of prac­tic­ing, applied, pub­lic inter­est, and engaged anthro­pol­ogy for con­sid­er­a­tion in tenure cases and pro­mo­tion to asso­ciate and full professor.

One-year visiting assistant prof at Amherst College

05/14/2011 FYI No comments

[job posted on East Asian Anthropology list]

Amherst College, Department of Anthropology-Sociology, seeks a one-year, full-time Visiting Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology for the aca­d­e­mic year 2011 – 2012. Ph.D. is required. The posi­tion involves teach­ing four courses (two each semes­ter), one of which must be in Qualitative Field Methods.

In addi­tion, the suc­cess­ful can­di­date will be expected to super­vise hon­ors the­ses. Ethnographic area and top­i­cal spe­cialty should com­ple­ment those of other mem­bers of the Department. Interested can­di­dates should sub­mit a let­ter of appli­ca­tion which includes a list of pos­si­ble courses, C.V. and the names and e-mail addresses of three referees.

To apply online, please visit our web­site at https://​jobs​.amherst​.edu. Consideration of appli­ca­tions will begin on June 1 and con­tinue until the posi­tion is filled. Amherst College is an equal oppor­tu­nity employer and encour­ages women, per­sons of color, and per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties to apply. The College is com­mit­ted to enrich­ing its edu­ca­tional expe­ri­ence and its cul­ture through the diver­sity of its fac­ulty, admin­is­tra­tion, and staff.

AAA2011 — Cold War Christianity, Islam, and the Neoliberal Gospel of Prosperity

03/30/2011 Research No comments

Looks like I’ll be attend­ing the anthro­pol­ogy meet­ing in Montreal in November 2011. I sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing abstract to a ses­sion on the cold war and neolib­er­al­ism, and I have to say, I’m excited about this research direc­tion — still broadly within the cul­tural pol­i­tics of reli­gion but involv­ing Islam and oil more explic­itly. Sure, it’s an abstract for a paper that will not mate­ri­al­ize for quite a while, and in about 6 months when I start writ­ing that paper, I’ll be curs­ing and mis­er­able, squint­ing as I won­der, what the hell am i say­ing? :-)

Cold War Christianity, Islam, and the Neoliberal Gospel of Prosperity

ABSTRACT. In a remark­ably short period of time, Islam and “ter­ror­ism” have replaced Communism as the enemy of the Free World. In con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles through­out South Korea, where anti-Communism was once dom­i­nant and per­va­sive, Islamophobia is now rou­tinely ratio­nal­ized as the­o­log­i­cally jus­ti­fied and geopo­lit­i­cally judi­cious. Ordinary evan­gel­i­cals of all ages, occu­pa­tions, and degrees of reli­gious con­vic­tion are urged to vol­un­teer for over­seas mis­sions to counter the world­wide “rise of Islam” and to pro­mote Korea’s advance­ment on the world stage. As it was evi­dent in the mis­sion­ary hostage case in Afghanistan in 2007, some even tar­get Muslim-majority areas where pros­e­ly­tiz­ing is not only ille­gal but gen­er­ally unwel­come. Closer to home, the domes­tic side of Korean-led world evan­ge­liza­tion con­cerns the grow­ing num­ber of Muslims in South Korea — the Korea Muslim Foundation esti­mates there are 120,000 to 130,000 Muslims cur­rently liv­ing in South Korea, many of whom are for­eign work­ers and migrants from South and Southeast Asia, par­tic­u­larly Pakistan and Bangladesh. As such, Korean evan­gel­i­cal dis­courses have come to address Islam both as a domes­tic fac­tor and a global force. This paper aims to locate the emerg­ing evan­gel­i­cal atti­tudes towards Islam in the legacy of Cold War Christianity and the neolib­eral gospel of pros­per­ity. In par­tic­u­lar, I focus on the evan­gel­i­cals’ vehe­ment oppo­si­tion against the 2011 Islamic Bond Legislation in Korea, the so-called “Sukuk bill” which was intro­duced to grant enor­mous tax ben­e­fits for for­eign investors from the Middle East. The tim­ing was uncanny — the leg­is­la­tion coin­cided with South Korea secur­ing a record-breaking US$40 bil­lion con­tract to build nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates. Explaining how evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers sought to mobi­lize pub­lic sen­ti­ments regard­ing Islam’s influ­ence on reli­gious free­dom and cap­i­tal­ist polit­i­cal econ­omy, I dis­cuss the mul­ti­ple tra­jec­to­ries that con­verge in the polit­i­cal the­ol­ogy of Cold War Christianity and mar­ket tri­umphal­ism, and the com­plex­i­ties of evan­gel­i­cal Christian under­stand­ings of finance, wealth, and prosperity.

I mean, check out this sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic illus­tra­tion from the right-wing Chosun Ilbo, pit­ting the Ministry of Strategy and Finance against Protestants. See my trans­la­tion below the image.
Chosun20110216_sukukDebate.jpg

The “Islamic Bond Legislation” debate between the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MoSF) and Protestants:

Concern MoSF Protestants
Excessive tax exemptions? There are no spe­cial exemp­tions in com­par­i­son to US Dollars or Japanese Yen. When only the UK, Singapore, and Ireland grant sim­i­lar tax exemp­tions, Korea’s con­ces­sions are excessive.
Possibilities of a “finan­cial Jihad”? It is nearly impos­si­ble that Islamic bonds will be mis­ap­pro­pri­ated towards fund­ing terrorism. Nobody knows where the bond prof­its go, so it is entirely pos­si­ble that they will finance terrorism.
Jumpstart spread of Islam in Korea? Finance and reli­gion are unre­lated. It is not pos­si­ble that this will have such wide influence. Because the Islamic Sharia Council will influ­ence the man­age­ment of the bonds, they will be able to influ­ence Korea.
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