Panels for 3rd CASA Conference, 2014


Visual Anthropology – Upcoming and Ongoing Projects

Panel organiser: Lívia Šavelková (University of Pardubice)

The objective of this panel is to promote projects in various stages of their realization and present the processes and forms of developing such projects. The panel encourages alternative and experimental forms of (re)presentation of themes and subjects related to visuality and ethnography. The new technology and its influence on anthropological procedures and outcomes result in drawing attention to ethical issues. This creative process of developing projects including methodological and ethical matters will be (self)reflected and discussed during the presentations of trailers, fragments of films, photography, and pictures. In the CEE countries, the anthropological production is still strongly tied with its textual form. It raises a question, if it is caused by the specifics of audiovisual anthropological production, such as expanses on technical facilities and costs of postproduction and distribution, and/or by the lack of roots of this (sub)discipline in this area. The panel will give an insight on the actual condition of the visual anthropology in this region.

 


Medical Anthropology at the Intersection of Civil Liberties, National Responsibilities, and Political Reform

Panel Organiser: Daniela Pěničková (Anglo-American University Prague)

The presented panel offers closely interwoven accounts of reforms in construction of sexuality and the fundamental right to health from intercultural perspective – both reconceptualizing and counterpointing the varying responsibilities of the individual, the corporation, and the state. Through an examination of ethnographic account from rural Slovakia, Buzekova gives attention to the inter-generational transformation in adherence to religious prescriptions in conceptualization of female body and reproduction. Bringing the process of sexuality deconstruction to a systemic level, Kościańska probes the changing motives and aspirations of sexology in Poland from the 1980s to the present. The two mid-panel closely related papers by Hall and Prokopik take the anthropological analysis of sexuality to the area of cultural models of romantic relations and perceptions of rights to health in the Czech LGTB community in the context of global public health and activist movement. Drawing on their UCLA funded long-term fieldwork the former explores how authenticity in gay sexual behavior yields counterpoints to Western-derived queer and homosexual identities and the basis for effective HIV prevention policies, while the latter points to the medical hegemony in transgender issues in Czech society that sharply contrasts with other Western paradigms. The last two contributions capitalize on the streak of critical/political perspectives in health that runs through all the papers. On the ethnographic example of Russian speaking migrants ineligible for national insurance in the Czech Republic, Penickova points to the process of coercion of the fundamental right to health into commodified “personal responsibility” amidst social state health care. Szenassy then takes the debate on state regulated health care into the realm of the conflicting civil liberties and responsible citizenship as illustrated in the growing anti-vaccination movement.

 


Anthropology in Action

Panel organizers: Petra Ezzeddine  (Charles University in Prague), Marie Heřmanová (Charles University in Prague)

The panel will focus on the specific application of anthropological knowledge in practically oriented social projects. We will present five applied anthropological projects currently running in the Czech Republic in order to provide an open forum for debate for anthropologist working outside academia. We will critically reflect concrete social projects in the field of urban planning, social policy making (social exclusion), participative activism and social marketing.  We will discuss crucial aspects connected to the anthropology in action: ethics of applied research, political and ideological assumptions of the research, „cultural brokerage“, project assessments and mutual dialog with academia, NGOs and state institutions.

 


Networks of Power: The Possibility of Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Current Research in the Context of Post-socialism

Panel Organisers: Jan Horský (Charles University in Prague), Michal Lehečka (Charles University in Prague), Barbora Bírová (Charles University in Prague)

The panel is focused on current approaches to and conceptualizations of power across anthropological subdisciplines. The aim of the panel organisers is to provoke discussion which can lead to interdisciplinary view on the issue of power, from both theoretical and empirical perspective.

The main purpose of the panel is to explore and articulate the bindings that connect the different approaches together and put them in an interdisciplinary framework. In two half-day sessions participants will have the opportunity of intense contact with each other. The panel is designed mainly for students of social, cultural, historical, philosophical, cognitive anthropology and also of human ethology.

Generally we focus on two main discourses (dimensions) of Power. The first, ethical discourse highlights the importance of reflecting the position of the researcher and his/her relations to other social actors. In other words it focuses on power aspects of field research.

The second discourse is rather theoretical. Views on Power vary within each anthropological discipline. In contemporary social theories the issue of power is frequently connected with topics of governmentality, gender, ethnicity, post-colonialism, migration, disciplination, marginality, adaptation etc.

Participants will have the opportunity to present their perspective on the issues presented above. This could be theoretical and methodological approaches, various empirical details, possibilities and limits of specific research methods and individual experience with an emphasis on characteristics of the field research.

 


Coping with marginalization: narrating and enacting new prospects

Panel organiser: Yasar Abu Ghosh (Charles University in Prague)

This panel, set up ad hoc of individually received abstracts, will present papers that share a common concern with coping/survival strategies of marginalised or economically dominated groups through cases issued from within the Euroasian area. The theoretically quite diverse background informing the reflections of authors is at the same time a challenge to and a promise of an informed discussion on issues related to contemporary regimes of governmentality, centre-periphery relations and the ensuing forms of social exclusion. Papers will analyse on the one hand the conditions of social hierarchies (symbolic fragmentation, neoliberal order in labor relations and social redistribution) and on the other the cultural repertoires instigating new prospects. As in any research with socially vulnerable groups, authors are compelled to consider ethical issues as part and parcel of their research endeavour.



Technology and Materiality

Panel organiser: Luděk Brož (The Institute of Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v.v.i.)

Addressing topics as varied as transformation of energy production or anti-food-waste activism, participants of this panel share sensitivity to the role of materiality. They study economic crises, social transformation or globalization through attention to materially embedded practices that enact such phenomena.

 


Anthropological view in the globalizing world

Panel organisers: Marek Halbich (Charles University in Prague), Alemayehu Kumsa (Charles University in Prague)

The panel will focus on the theoretical and practical contributions dealing with reciprocal interconnection of the local environments with regional, national or supranational (global) environment in the social, political, economic, environmental, etc. field in Europe, but especially in countries and regions of the developing world. We welcome papers, among others, in the context of anthropology of globalisation, anthropology of colonialism and post-colonialism, glocal ethnography, political ecology, local knowledge, anthropology of development, etc., focusing for example on rejuvenated forms of nationalism, social exclusion, local and regional political movements and other forms of political activism, land ownership (especially landgrabbing), tourist worlds and their participation in the transformation of local communities, environmental change, particularly in developing countries (e.g. the local population adaptation to climate change, natural disasters, etc.), violence and conflict in the public space, etc., while the consideration will be in accordance with the overall proposition of conference put on a multidisciplinary approach, i.e., they are welcome also sociological, politological, (ethno)historical, sociolinguistic, cognitive and other papers from related sciences.