AES will hold its annual spring conference, co-hosted with CASCA, on May 13-16, 2009. The joint conference will be held at the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in Vancouver. The UBC campus, situated on the Pacific coast, offers a magnificent venue for the conference events. AES councilor Jacqueline Solway is co-organizing the conference with Gaston Gordillo of CASCA. The conference theme is “Transnational Anthropologies: Convergences and Divergences in Globalized Disciplinary Networks,” described by the co-organizers as follows: In an era when anthropology is increasingly attentive to transnational connections, globalized geographies, and diasporic identities, the discipline itself is subject to new and challenging forms of deterritorialization and re-territorialization. Anthropology has long been constituted by tensions between the gravitational force of its various national traditions and the pull toward an international intellectual cosmopolitanism. Yet the increasing presence of scholars from the world “periphery” in metropolitan universities, the rise to international prominence of subaltern academic centers, the deterritorialized concerns and priorities of funding institutions, and the growing transnational links between researchers, research institutions, and research subjects (among other factors) are further complicating the spatiality of anthropological practice. These shifts, in turn, are transforming the way anthropologists examine the production of power relations, inequalities and identities in local and global arenas.
A high point of the conference will be the AES plenary address, to be delivered by Olivia Harris of the London School of Economics. The talk, “Holism and Politics: Provincialism and Cosmopolitanism in a Transnational Discipline,” will be discussed by Don Brenneis (UC Santa Cruz) and Sylvia Yanagisako (Stanford U). Gustavo Lins Ribeiro will deliver the CASCA plenary address.
In addition to the plenary sessions and panels, AES and CASCA have organized an Anthropology Film Festival over the course of the conference. And, of course, there will be parties. A reception will follow the AES plenary session on Wednesday night, and the local organizing committee, in conjunction with the UBC Museum of Anthropology, is hosting a party on the evening of Friday, May 15, at the world-renowned museum. Information about registration, conference logistics and accommodation can be found at www.aesonline.org. We look forward to seeing you in Vancouver!
