SAE Sponsored Events at the 2024 AAA Annual Meeting
On October 15, 2024 by Ognjen KojanićSAE Special Events:
Wednesday, November 20
SAE Visit to Tarpon Springs: A Multi-sensory and Embodied Introduction to the Greek-American Community’s Cultural Life and Histories
2 PM – 10:30 PM
Tarpon Springs, with its large Greek community and ongoing ties with the Aegean islands, is renowned for its sponge economy, innovative musical traditions, dance education, popular religious practice and vibrant social life. On this interactive excursion, participants will learn about the changing technologies of sponge diving, undertake a walking tour of Greek Town, and meet and hear from community leaders. Over Greek food and drink, we’ll hear musical histories, learn a dance or two and join in Greek-American sociability, accompanied by local musicians. A cultural experience and a networking opportunity. Pre-registration is required. Deadline November 12.
More information and the registration link are available here.
Friday, November 22
William A. Douglass Distinguished Lecture in European Studies by Stef Jansen
07:30 PM – 09:00 PM / TCC 125
The 2024 William A. Douglass Distinguished Lecture will be given by Professor Stef Jansen, Professor at the University of Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Honorary Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester (UK). Preceding the lecture, SAE president-elect Dorothy Zinn will announce the winner(s) of 2024 William A. Douglass Book Prize. A reception will follow the lecture. All are welcome.
Title and Abstract of the lecture:
Everyday geopolitics: perspectives from the European semiperiphery
Stef Jansen (University of Sarajevo)
In many countries of the Western core, most people can live their everyday lives largely oblivious to geopolitical dynamics. To many others such obliviousness may sound like a luxury. This lecture offers reflections developed from research in a contemporary setting in the European semiperiphery shot through with particularly sharp geopolitical intensities: the supervised and contested polity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It addresses two main questions. First, through the notion of ‘everyday geopolitics’, I ask how we can approach vernacular engagements and entanglements with geopolitical dynamics and hierarchies as an object of ethnographic analysis. I discuss one modality grounded in non-elite reasoning and affect, and another one tracing historical processes through which geopolitics serves as the infrastructure for everyday practices of social reproduction that sustain certain social formations. Second, in light of calls to provincialise Europe, including ‘decolonial’ perspectives, I explore the critical potential of conducting such ethnographic analysis specifically in the European semiperiphery. While both subjected to and complicit in Western coloniality, I argue, lives in the Balkans facilitate a heightened attunement to interimperial constellations of power. How can such a vantage point contribute to our understandings of sovereignty, agency and empire? Overall, my aim is to think through some of the ways in which the ethnography of everyday geopolitics in the European semiperiphery can sharpen the kind of anthropological questions we can ask about Europe.
Friday, November 22
Society for the Anthropology of Europe Reception
09:00 PM – 10:00 PM / TCC 125
The Society for the Anthropology of Europe Reception will follow the William A. Douglass Distinguished Lecture in European Studies. All are welcome.
Saturday, November 23
Society for the Anthropology of Europe (SAE) Business Meeting
12:45 PM – 02:45 PM / TCC 125
This is the official business meeting of the SAE.
SAE Invited Sessions
Wednesday, November 20
Roundtable: Thinking with Alberto Toscano about Late Fascism Today
02:30 PM-04:00 PM / Marriott WS Room 1 Roundtable/Town Hall – In-Person
Critical Urban Anthropology Association
Don Nonini, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Department of Anthropology; Ida Susser, CUNY, Hunter College, Department of Anthropology
Don Kalb, University of Bergen, Department of Social Anthropology; Maddalena Gretel Cammelli; Greg Feldman, University of Windsor; Alberto Toscano, Simon Fraser University; Svati Shah; Don Nonini, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Department of Anthropology; Ida Susser, CUNY, Hunter College, Department of Anthropology
Alberto Toscano’s brilliant new book, Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis, 2023, provides new and deeply provocative insights about contemporary authoritarian politics today, including its most extreme form, fascism. Starting from the basis that “fascism is intimately linked to the prerequisites of capitalist domination…” [what]… W..E.B. DuBois called “the counter-revolution of property,” Toscano has laid out a new heuristic for the theoretical analysis of fascism today that repudiates the old baggage of historical analogies and check-off lists of “classical” fascist studies from the interwar period to the present. Instead, Toscano sees fascisms (plural) as deeply connected to imperial rule, racial capitalism and settler colonialism, to the point that, for example, fascism’s place in U.S. society is “as American as apple pie”. Toscano sees fascism and the liberal state not in opposition, but as intimately interconnected: contemporary neoliberalism at its core, he contends, is authoritarian, the “‘sovereignty of private rights guaranteed by strong power'” – the neoliberal state. Different contemporary fascisms’ ideologies Toscano sees as connected to a different temporality from the present based on fantasy, mythmaking and nostalgia. Fascisms are defined inherently by their violence which is harnessed to fervent desires for ethno-nationalist rebirth in the face of civilizational and existential threats – be they from Jews, liberals, immigrants, Blacks, Roma, Muslims, Asians, women, gay and lesbians, or others who threaten racial and male supremacist definitions of adequate humanity – humanity which fascists see as danger or waste, and out of place – and as worth exterminating. The participants of this roundtable will examine what Toscano refers to as “fascist potentials” in a variety of ethnographic case studies they draw upon.
Friday, November 22
From Post-Socialism to Post-Capitalism? Revisiting Post-Cold War Expectations in the Time of Poly-Crisis
12:45 PM-02:15 PM / Virtual VR 3 Roundtable/Town Hall – Virtual Live
Organizers: Samantha Fox; Christina Schwenkel, University of California, Riverside, Department of Anthropology
Presenters: Felix Ringel, Durham University; Smoki Musaraj, Ohio University, Department of Sociology & Anthropology; Larisa Kurtovic, University of Ottawa; Catalina Tesar; Samantha Fox
Over 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ruins of 20th century socialism have begun to emerge in unexpected ways. As they do so, scholars have begun to reject the hegemony of failure-centric narratives, instead turning their attention towards the ways in which socialism’s sociocultural norms and material legacies have influenced the formation of novel social practices and urban imaginaries. This roundtable examines how the socialist past has been metabolized across various sociopolitical contexts. In light of the widespread failures of neoliberal governance, how has socialism’s multifaceted ruination (Stoler 2016) mobilized commitments to communitarian ethics and inclusive notions of urban thriving (Murawski 2018; Schwenkel 2020; Fox 2024)? How has it mobilized creative encounters with capitalist markets (Khatchadourian 2022; Cherkaev 2023)? And how has it enabled responses to perceived economic and cultural stagnation (Ringel 2018; Dzenovska 2020)? At a moment threatened by global poly-crisis–climate change, inequality, authoritarianism–how can the remnants of the socialist past help us forge alternative pathways forward?
SAE Sponsored Session
Wednesday, November 20
Iceland as a Space of Exceptionalism
10:15 AM-11:45 AM / TCC 101-102 Oral Presentation Session
Organizers: Kristin Loftsdottir, University of Iceland and Christopher Marcatili, Australian National University, Department of Anthropology
Presenters: Kristin Loftsdottir, University of Iceland; Goda Cicenaite, University of Iceland; Charlotte Christiansen; Christopher Marcatili, Australian National University, Department of Anthropology; Anna Runarsdottir; Mar Wolfgang Mixa, University of Iceland; Andrea Smith, Lafayette College, Department of Anthropology & Sociology
Iceland has long appeared as a space of exceptionalism, basing on persistent tropes of innocence, positioning the country as existing outside Europe’s colonial history (Loftsdóttir 2008; 2019). Long striving for recognition by more prominent global powers, Iceland in the 21st century has featured much more strongly internationally for the last few years, especially after the drastic economic crash in the early 2000. Like other Nordic countries, Iceland has been perceived as an exceptional space of equality in multiple senses, but also as a site of resistance and organic creativity expressed in production of comedy, music and literature. Furthermore, since 2010 the country has been aggressively marketed by the Icelandic government as an exotic in-between place between North America and Europe, which has cemented it even more firmly into global imaginaries that classify bodies in particular ways. Iceland’s sudden visibility internationally in the 21st century has importantly also stimulated the imagination of scholars, reflected in that the country has become an important site of anthropological praxis, with research on Iceland increasing significantly in the 21st century. In this panel, we ask what kind of practices do imaginaries of Iceland as an exceptional space offer. How can Iceland be seen as a site of resistance, exclusion or privileges? How can we, as 69 anthropologists, understand Iceland in the world as a site of transnational encounters and fusions, using Iceland to reflect on some of the larger politics and powers at play? How can Iceland’s exceptionalism be used to interrogate more widely various practices that position some spaces as exceptional and others insignificant? Contributors in this panel question and investigate Icelandic exceptionalism on various fronts. What does the projection of Icelandic exceptionalism say about the larger geopolitical dynamics of the present? Gender equality and access to decent housing have all been part of Icelandic exceptionalism, embedded in its position as a Nordic Welfare state. What kind of praxis do ethnographic research show that supports or counteracts claims of exceptionalism, and do migrants in Iceland experience equality within the exceptional Iceland that claims to lack racism? How does global mobility of the 21st affect nationalistic ideas of exceptionalism – of unique properties of the nation that in Iceland have strongly revolved around ideas of language? While basing on ethnographic work in Iceland, the panel reflects, furthermore, on larger questions on the meaning of Europeanness, and ways of being European at times of increased polarization. What kind of praxis is made possible or excluded by different kinds of European subjects?
Poster Sessions
Friday, November 22
Back to the Land, Back to the Local: Recent Protests by Farmers and Others in France and Germany Provide Fresh Fodder for Right Wing Extremists
08:30 AM-10:00 AM / TCC West Hall Poster – In-Person Live
By Patricia Heck, University of the South, Sewanee
Recent demonstrations by French farmers led to tractor convoys, road blockades, and manure sprayed on government buildings. German farmers and truckers blockaded Berlin, other large German cities, and major roadways. At the large winter farm show in Paris, President Macron was assailed for policies that farmers think over-regulate their use of the land. Hedges, fertilizers, field size, disposal of manure all have EU regulations. Although the Frexit (France out of the EU) rightwing party Les Patriotes has normally focused on protests featuring world events (vaccines, Ukraine, the Olympic Games), they have now seized on the anger of French farmers as a means of gaining support from voters. German farmers and truckers are protesting recent post-Covid austerity measures as well as EU interference. While world events have also been the major focus of the AfD, since its inception the party has been opportunistic, co-opting local issues whenever possible, to foster polarization. Alarmed by growing support for the AfD and other right-wing extreme parties, pro-democracy protests, sometimes massive, have occurred, especially in West Germany. The June EU parliamentary elections and East German state elections in the fall should demonstrate the strength and depth of support for these parties. We provide an in-depth discussion of the meaning of this turn to the local.
Friday, November 22
Environmental Conservation and Linguistic Heritage: Exploring the significance of imagined landscapes and identity in the Western Isles of Scotland
08:30 AM-10:00 AM / TCC West Hall Poster – In-Person Live
By Genevieve Soucek
Coastal landscapes, threatened by climate change and global waste, have become important sites for conservation efforts. An under appreciated element of such efforts, however, is their connection to not only the broader work of archaeological and linguistic preservation but the reproduction of identity under changing environmental and economic conditions. This poster, based on ethnographic research in the Outer Hebrides islands in the northern Highlands of Scotland, examines how the material and linguistic terrain of Scottish identity is cared for and protected via entangled conservation efforts and discourses of sustainability. In doing so, it offers new insight into how people endeavor to preserve identity through the stewardship of archaeological ruins, artifacts, and monuments (Jones 2009; 2012; Jones and Yarrow 2022), as well as the use of beach cleans, ecotourism, and heritage commodification (Melis and Chambers 2021) to create a sense of place and belonging in a changing environment.
Friday, November 22
Temporalities of the Borderscape: Irregular Migration and Rurality Along the Slovenia/Croatia Border
08:30 AM-10:00 AM / TCC West Hall Poster – In-Person Live
By Matthew Porges
This presentation draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted along the Slovenia/Croatia border in order to explore how “irregular” migration into Europe is constructed, imagined, and acted upon by local rural communities. Until Croatia joined the Schengen Area–the European Union’s internal zone of largely check-free travel–in 2023, the Slovenia/Croatia border denoted one of Schengen’s external southern edges. This gave it disproportionate importance for migrants moving along the “Western Balkan Migration Route” towards Western Europe. In Slovenian border villages, responses to an influx of “irregular” migrants (from the Middle East, East Africa, and Central Asia) varied from hostility to solidarity–and often mapped in complex ways to the region’s partisan politics. This presentation explores the multivalent relationship between residents of such border villages, which are enmeshed in multiple temporal discourses–of the legacy of Yugoslav socialism or AustroHungarian imperialism, EU expansion, and the memory of the Balkan wars of the 1990s–and the migrants themselves, drawing on interviews and participant-observation conducted with both groups. In particular,