APLA Activities at the 2014 AAA Meetings:
Reception, Saturday, December 6, 2014: 7:30 AM-9:00 AM
Panel, Thursday, December 4, 2014: 8:30 PM-10:00 PM
Reception, Wednesday, December 3, 2014: 6:00 PM-8:00 PM
Reception, Thursday, December 4, 2014: 1:00 PM-2:15 PM
Business Meeting Sponsored, Saturday, December 6, 2014: 1:00 PM-2:15 PM Abstract is available to registrants only.
And all of the APLA sessions can be found here: Web program
Anthropologies of Conflict in a New Millennium
American Ethnological Society and Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Spring Conference 2013
April 11-13, 2013 ChicagoFrom the events of September 11 to the war in Iraq, from the Arab spring to Greek riots, from the invasion of Afghanistan to the occupation of Wall Street, the opening of the new millennium has witnessed a burst of new forms of conflict around the world. For anthropologists, these events have raised profound questions both about the nature of human conflict and about the place of our discipline within it. How should anthropologists understand the new forms of conflict that increasingly dominate the world stage? In what ways do we need to rethink our accustomed notions of power, of nation, of technology, and of the relationship between individual and group? And how do we situate ourselves, scientifically and morally, amid the contending groups whose cultures we study?
In April of 2013, the American Ethnological Society and the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology explored these questions at our joint Spring Meeting in Chicago, Illinois. We invite proposals for papers, panels, workshops, and special events that interrogate the place of conflict in anthropological thought and practice. Possible subjects might include, but are not limited to:
- Anthropologists in conflict zones
- Meanings of power in the contemporary world
- The ethics of anthropological engagement with military authorities
- Law and violence
- The meanings of protest on the international stage
- Practices of conflict resolution, repair, and reconciliation
- The changing role of the nation-state
- Religion and power in contemporary conflicts
- The role of the legal process in times of conflict
- Conflict and the surveillance state
- Changing understandings of religious fundamentalism
- Anthropological ethics in a time of violence
- The role and influence of diaspora populations in conflict
- Ethnography of specific conflict arenas – e.g., the Occupy movement, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, the Arab Spring, the European austerity revolts, the War on Terror, the Tea Party movement
As always, paper and panel proposals on topics unrelated to the meetings theme are also welcome. Proposals for workshops and special events should be submitted through the online portal by February 1, 2013. Proposals for panels and individual papers should be submitted through the online portal by February 15, 2013.
JANUARY 2013: AES’s graduate student representative, Jessica Hardin (jahardin@brandeis.edu) assembled the following graduate-student workshops for the spring meetings. We are pleased to announce that AES will provide a subsidy of $160 (the cost of one night conference hotel) for graduate students who participate in any of the following three workshops (A-C). Details on subsidy eligibility and workshop registration is forthcoming. We will also be hosting a grad student mixer at the meetings, details to come!
- A) Methodological and Ethical Issues in Ethnographic Research on Conflict and Violence, led by Carolyn Nordstrom (U of Notre Dame) and Sally Engle Merry (NYU) (subsidy available)
- B) Managing Careers, Balancing Personal Life, led by Andrew Buckser (Purdue U) (subsidy available)
- C) Conflict and New Media, facilitators TBA (subsidy available)
APLA Activities at the 2013 AAA Meetings:
APLA Invited Sessions:
Wednesday, 12-1:45 PM: REMOVED FROM THE NATION: ILLEGALITY, DETENTION, AND DEPORTATION IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG PEOPLE, organized by Susan J. Terrio and Deborah Boehm, with Susan Coutin as discussant. This remarkable panel brings together ethnographers and legal practitioners to “consider a range of experiences of illegality within the United States and beyond the borders of the nation.”
Thursday, 1:45-3:30 PM, GRAY ZONES AND THEIR AFTERMATHS: MEMORY, MOURNING, JUSTICE, organized by Elizabeth F. Drexler with Sally Engle Merry and Kimberly Theidon as discussants, explores the “gray zones” of conflict and post-conflict situations by considering “the aftermath of collaboration, betrayal and other zones of intimate engagement between indeterminate conflict protagonists.”
Friday, 4-5:45 PM: ROBOPROCESSES, organized by Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson, with Rena Lederman and Joseph Dumit as discussants. This innovative panel, co-sponsored by APLA and AES, explores “evaluative protocols or formulaic scripts for interaction and judgment mobilized by corporate and state bureaucracies… which sort, standardize, and hierarchize.” This panel promises to push forward conversations on the role of the technical in bureaucracy, and also draws on themes that emerged in the conversation with Besteman and Gusterson that took place at the 2012 APLA business meeting.
Friday, 10:15-12:00 PM. THE CULTURE OF POVERTY: PITY AND SELF-CRITIQUE IN CONFRONTATIONS WITH POVERTY AND SCHOOL FAILURE, 1959-2013, organized by Raymond P McDermott and Shirin Vossoughi with Frederick D Erickson as discussant. This interdisciplinary panel, co-sponsored by APLA and the Council on Anthropology and Education, considers the role of earlier anthropological critiques in shaping school reform and educational policy in approaching poverty and its relationship to culture, in the hopes of shedding light on the present.
SPECIAL EVENTS :
GENRES of PUBLIC WRITING in POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY: ADDRESSING MULTIPLE AUDIENCES
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo
Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne
Susan Hirsch, George Mason University
Linda Layne, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Scheduled Event Date: Thursday, November 21, 2013
Scheduled Start Time of the Event: 12:15 PM
Location of Event and Room Name: Chicago Hilton, Conference Room 4E
GRADUATE STUDENT PANEL: NAVIGATING the JOB MARKET: ACADEMIC CAREERS in POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Elif Babul, Department of Anthropology, Mount Holyoke College
Claire Cesareo-Silva, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Saddleback College
Bianca Dahl, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Julia Elyachar, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine
Scheduled Event Date: Friday, November 22, 2013
Scheduled Start Time of the Event: 6:15 PM
Location of Event and Room Name: Chicago Hilton, Conference Room 4G
APLA Board Events:
ASSOCIATION FOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY BOARD MEETING
Scheduled Event Date: Friday, November 22, 2013
Scheduled Start Time of the Event: 12:00 PM
Location of Event and Room Name: Chicago Hilton, Conference Room 5C
ASSOCIATION for POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY BUSINESS MEETING
Scheduled Event Date: Saturday, November 23, 2013
Scheduled Start Time of the Event: 12:15 PM
Location of Event and Room Name: Chicago Hilton, Marquette Room
APLA at AAA San Francisco 2012
APLA sponsored or co-sponsored six invited sessions this year, as well as 42 other panels. We hosted two special events aimed at career development for new PhDs, and held five graduate workshops. Below you’ll find detailed information about the events we held and the calls for participation we circulated.
Please join us for our annual business meeting on Saturday Nov 17th! At our “more than a business meeting, we will award our student paper prize, conduct some additional APLA business, and will feature Catherine Besteman leading an informal discussion of the following questions:
- What forms can public anthropology take in the current political landscape?
- How can anthropology respond to public anxiety?
- What alternatives can anthropology suggest?
The APLA sessions and schedule can be found here at the main AAA page. Please take special note of our workshops:
Launching a Career in Academia
Panelists: Catherine Besteman, Colby College, Jennifer Goett, Michigan State University, Jeffrey Martin, University of Hong Kong, Ramah McKay, University of Minnesota
(joint panel with NAPA) Practicing Anthropology in Political and Legal Careers
Panelists: Madelaine Adelman, Arizona State University, Amy Paul-Ward, Florida International University, Terry Redding, Beta Research Associates and Redding Services, Tim Wallace, North Carolina State University and President, National Association for the Practice of Anthropology
Graduate Workshops
Introduction and Description: Each year during the AAA meetings, APLA sponsors a series of special workshops in which small groups of graduate students and faculty convene around thematic conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues. These workshops offer an intimate mentorship context in which students can engage in intensive discussions regarding specific problems in their anthropological research and writing. Each workshop is limited to 4-5 students, who meet with 2 faculty facilitators at a café or restaurant near the AAA conference hotel. This year’s workshop topics and facilitators are the following:
1. After “Studying Up”: Anthropologists and Elites, 40 Years Later
Faculty facilitators: Douglas Holmes, SUNY-Binghamton; Tess Lea, University of Sydney
On the 40th anniversary of Laura Nader’s call to “up the anthropologist,” this workshop invites participants whose projects confront new and enduring methodological, conceptual, and ethical issues in anthropology’s engagement with elites. In this context, the term “elites” encompasses a variety of subjects – including policymakers and bureaucrats, technical experts, judges, and scientists – who in some way “are directing the everyday aspects of our lives.” While Nader conceived of researching such subjects as “studying up,” this workshop encourages participants to explore how changing political, economic, and epistemic contexts create a multiplicity of ways for the anthropologist to approach and relate with elites.
2. Language and Linguistic Analysis in Political and Legal Anthropology
Faculty facilitator: John Conley, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theories and techniques developed in linguistic anthropology have long informed political and legal anthropological research. This workshop is intended for students interested in how to apply linguistic anthropology’s methods of data collection and/or analysis to research on law, policy, social movements, etc. It invites participants working to refine research projects focused explicitly upon language, as well as those who are grappling with how to “take language seriously” in broader studies of legal and political phenomena.
3. Using Documents and Archives in Ethnographic Research
Faculty facilitators: Jane K. Cowan, University of Sussex; Kregg Hetherington, Dalhousie University
This workshop invites students whose projects engage with contemporary or historical documents or other archival materials, whether as a supplement to, or an object of, ethnographic research. Participants will discuss how to understand and think critically about such documents’ roles as sources of data as well as “data points” in their research. The workshop will therefore be a venue in which to engage questions at the intersection of historical anthropology and recent research by legal and political anthropologists on the document and archive as form.
4. Governance, Jurisdiction, and the Politics of Scale
Faculty facilitators: Matthew Hull, University of Michigan; Annelise Riles, Cornell University
Recent anthropological scholarship on contemporary legal and regulatory formations demonstrates the significant analytical purchase of the concepts of governance, jurisdiction, and scale. This workshop invites students whose research engages with these concepts, and their relations to new and emergent legal subjectivities, objectifications, and forms of authority. This may include projects concerned with the proliferation and sub-division of legal regimes, the replication of governance practices across regulatory spaces, translations or transformations of governmental regimes across scales (e.g. “local,” “global,” “urban”), and the constitution of scales themselves.
5. Law, Property, and Infrastructure
Faculty facilitators: Julian Brash, Montclair State University; Rosemary Coombe, York University
This workshop invites students whose research focuses on the intersection between law and property, and especially those interested in recent battles over so-called public and private infrastructures. As various institutions and resources vital to the future of urban, agricultural, and “natural” environments are increasingly privatized, states can no longer be thought of as exclusive providers of “public goods.” Workshop participants may consider how such reconfigurations alter our notions of property, the role of law in constituting boundaries between kinds of persons and things, and the distribution of rights and responsibilities.
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APLA at AAA Montréal 2011
APLA sponsored 4 invited sessions, 36 panels, and a Recent PhD Panel. We also held our annual business meeting and held an APLA Distinguished Lecture.
Didier Fassin, In the Heart of the State: The Moral Economies of Justice, the William A. Douglass Distinguished Lecture (co-sponsored with the Society for the Anthropology of Europe), is at 6:15 in Hyatt Regency Montréal Soprano A. A cash bar and buffet will immediately follow at 7:30.
Wednesday, November 16
- LAW, LEGITIMACY AND POWER IN THE CONSTITUTION OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
- TRACING COMPETING DISCOURSES OF INDIGENEITY AND AUTOCHTHONY
- VIOLENCE AND POTENTIALITY
- TECHNOLOGIES OF MEDIATION, LANGUAGES OF SOLIDARITY AND DIFFERENCE
- INVESTIGATING THE “IDENTITY INDUSTRY”
- QUERYING THE TIDEMARKS OF CRIME: RETRACING THE “NEW ANTHROPOLOGY OF CRIME”
- TECHNOLOGIES OF REPAIR: TOOLKITS OF HUMANITARIAN GOVERNANCE AND INTERVENTION
Thursday, November 17
- DEPLOYMENT STRESSED: LEGACIES OF THE WAR ON TERROR IN HOME FRONT COMMUNITIES
- OLD THREATS, NEW GUISES: SECUROCATIC WARS AND THE PRODUCTION OF DIFFERENCE IN THE AMERICAS
- TRACES OF THE STATE: ETHNOGRAPHIES OF FORMATIONS, DISPERSALS AND DISAPPEARANCES
- LEGACIES OF AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES: LOCAL PRACTICES OF MEMORY, JUSTICE AND SECURITY
- BETWEEN THRILL AND DISILLUSION: ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE AFFECTIVE LIFE OF THE STATE
- ILLICIT TRAFFIC: OUTLAW COMMERCE AND STATE GOVERNANCE IN THE 21st CENTURY
- WAR AND CHILD SOLDIERS: A DIALOGUE WITH ISHMAEL BEAH, AUTHOR OF A LONG WAY GONE
Friday, November 18
Invited Sessions:
- TOWARDS AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF TRANSFORMATION, PART I
- LEAKS, LIES, AND RED TAPE – STATE SECRECY AND ITS DISCONTENTS
- FROM CLASS STRUGGLE TO INDIGENOUS RIGHTS? COMPARING PROCESSES, POLICIES AND POLITICS GLOBALLY
Other sessions:
- SOVEREIGNTY AND SUBJECTIVITY: FRAMEWORKS OF ENGAGEMENT AND DISENGAGEMENT
- FORENSICS OF CAUSALITY: RISK, INJURY AND REDRESS
- STATE PRACTICES AND LOCAL TRACES: TIDEMARKS AND LEGACIES OF REGULATORY REGIMES IN POST/LATE-SOCIALIST COUNTRIES
- THE CREATIVITY OF CONCEALMENT
- THE POLITICS OF LEGAL REPRESENTATION: ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES
- BETWEEN INTEGRATION AND RESISTANCE: MILITARIZATION IN THE PACIFIC
- ILLEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGISTS
- BORDERS, FRONTIERS, AND GOVERNANCE
- VULNERABLE GOVERNMENT: BUREAUCRACY, MATERIALITY, HUMANITY
Saturday, November 19
Invited Session: ABORIGINAL DILEMMAS IN THE CANADIAN SETTLER STATE: ANTHROPOLOGY, LAW, AND SOVEREIGNTY
Other Sessions:
- INSTITUTING ONESELF AS A POLITICAL SUBJECT: NEGOTIATING THE LEGACIES OF COLONIAL RELATIONS
- THINKING THROUGH NGOs: HOW NGO STUDIES CONTRIBUTE TO ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY
- ANTHROPOLOGIES OF THE COVERT: FROM SPYING AND BEING SPIED UPON TO SECRET MILITARY OPS AND THE CIA
- POLITICAL DISENCHANTMENT, CYNICISM, AND NOSTALGIA
- HIGH TIDEMARKS IN ASIA-PACIFIC: THE POLITICS AND VOICES OF CONSTRUCTING HERITAGE
- LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY: WHAT’S AT STAKE?
- A FISCAL ANTHROPOLOGY? ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACHES TO TAXATION
- DEMOCRACY WITHOUT ADJECTIVES
Sunday, November 20
- CONSTRUCTIONS OF IDENTITY AND TOPOGRAPHIES OF JUSTICE
- TRACES OF DEVELOPMENT: CONCEPTUAL LEGACIES AND THE MAINTENANCE OF INEQUALITIES IN SOCIAL INTERVENTION
- VIOLENCE, POPULISM, AND (POST) NEOLIBERAL DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA
- WILD COMPARISON IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF PREEMPTION
- [DIS]CLOSING STATE NARRATIVES: NARRATIVES OF DISCLOSURE IN COLOMBIA’S ARMED CONFLICT
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APLA at AAA New Orleans 2010
APLA sponsored 5 invited sessions, 37 sessions, 1 recent PhD panel, and 3 graduate student workshops!
Graduate Student Workshops 2010
At the 2010 AAA meeting, APLA sponsored the following workshops:
Border Regimes of Circulation with Brenda Chalfin and Julie Y. Chu
Whether at land, maritime or air borders, the global circulation of people and things is a dynamic process of flows and stops. For a range of actors, the organization, regulation and disruption of this process is an ongoing project. Students researching the topic of circulation at borders will discuss their ideas with scholars and other students researching similar issues from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives.
Student Organizer: Janell Rothenberg
Approaching Postcolonial State Sovereignty and its Limits with Michael Hardt and Jason Cross
As they have appeared in the postcolonial world, technologies and techniques of global capital over the last twenty years had two visible dimensions: on the one hand, industrial production has moved to urban peripheries in search of cheap labor, on the other, the extraction of natural resources in peripheries has been relentlessly pursued, even to the extent of war, with little interest in fostering local economies around these resources. What both share is the positioning of the “market” as sovereign. This raises the question of how we are to approach the state, and the postcolonial state in particular, given that there are lots of signs that it has not been rendered irrelevant as a mere mechanism of the market. This workshop invites students to reflect on the conditions and techniques of sovereignty, within, beyond, against, and alongside the state in the postcolonial world.
Student Organizers: Filipe Calvão and Bernard Dubbeld
Circulation of Transnational Threats with Gregory Feldman and Andrew Lakoff
Perceptions of the increasing influence of global phenomenon have led to modes of governance meant to address so-called transnational problem from climate change and natural disasters to money laundering and unauthorized immigration. Students working on transnational phenomenon will have a chance toworkshop their ideas with scholars and other students engaging with the transnational in their theoretical and ethnographic work.
Student Organizer: Connie McGuire
Sessions and Panels 2010
Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency: Constructions and Destructions of Conscience
Empire, Multitude & Commonwealth: The Anthropology of the Global in the Radical Political Philosophy of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt
APLA’s Panel for Recent PhDs
Andean Territorialities and the Shifting Circuits of Water, Oil, Gas, and Land
Transitional Justice: Global Circulations and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence
Legacies in Motion: A Consideration of the Work and Impact of David Maybury-Lewis
Safe Haven in America: Thirty Years after the Refugee Act of 1980
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APLA at AAA Philadelphia 2009
APLA sponsored 5 panels and 7 mentoring workshops covering student research projects as well as career issues. We also held 4 research workshops, and 3 workshops on professional issues given the current market situation and the success of last year’s events.
Graduate Research Workshops 2009
We invited graduate students who are at the pre-, during, and post-fieldwork stages to discuss their work with faculty in one of four interest areas:
Cultures of Illegality with Susan Coutin and Ric Curtis
Affect and the Law with Elizabeth Povinelli and Don Brenneis
The Law and its Indigenous Others/Objects/Intersections with Rosemary Coombe, Madelaine Adelman and Ann Kakaliouras
Technologies of the Law with Kimberley Coles and Elizabeth Mertz
APLA Professional Mentoring Workshops 2009
Job Search: How to understand what search committees look for? with Bill Maurer and Sally Merry
What to do after you file? with John Bowen, Ilana Gershon, and Daniel Goldstein
Book Proposal Workshop with Mark Goodale and Tom Boellstorff
Sponsored Panels 2009
Towards a Medical Anthropology against Militarism (co-sponsored by the Society for Medical Anthropology)
Theorizing Infrastructure: Technopolitics of Development in Contemporary Africa (co-sponsored by the Association for Africanist Anthropology)
Bureaucracy and Befuddlement
The End of Citizenship in Latin America: The Body as a New Site of Political Struggle (co-sponsored by the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology)
States of Desire: Citizenship, Political Subjectivity, and Social Change (co-sponsored by the American Ethnological Society)
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APLA at AAA San Francisco 2008
APLA-Sponsored Panels
Political Parties and Subjectivity in Africa (co-sponsored by the Association for Africanist Anthropology)
Critical Ethnographic Perspectives on the War in Iraq (co-sponsored by the Middle East Section)
Liberal Religiosities (co-sponsored with the Society for the Anthropology of Religion)
Graduate Student Research Workshops 2008
Religion and Politics: Intersections, Co-minglings, and Oppositions
Social Movements: NGOs, Non-NGOs and Other Political Strategies
Science, Technology, and the Law: Circulations and Placements
Time: Anticipation and Memory in Law and Politics
Public Policy and the Law: Politics in Action
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology 