CFP AAA 2012: Ethnography at the Borders of the Intimate

[Anna Jaysane-Darr]

Apologies for cross-posting.

Call for Papers AAA 2012

Title: Ethnography at the Borders of the Intimate: Anthropological Investigations into Intimacy



Organizers: Anna Jaysane-Darr and Casey Miller (Brandeis University)

 The theme of this year’s AAA meeting urges us to scrutinize the boundaries of our discipline, to examine how and where we draw the line between “anthropology” and its others, between our interlocutors and ourselves. In keeping with this effort, we request proposals for papers that test, traverse—or perhaps even transgress—the borders of the intimate.

 “Intimacy” has been conceptualized as a quality of social relationships that stands in opposition to the profit-maximizing imperatives of industrial capitalism. The home, family, and marriage have come to be idealized as protected, love-filled, “intimate” domains (Collier et al 1997). Yet, cross-cultural study has revealed that the workings of love are often intertwined with concerns about economic wellbeing and local economies (Cole 2009). Sex, marriage, and reproduction have also been important sites of racial management in the colonies and in the United States (Stoler 2002, 2006), revealing the sexualized and racialized “interior frontiers” (2002: 80) that designate belonging and exclusion within the nation. Although some social scientists have argued that changing notions and experiences of intimacy may be leading to increased equality and democracy both in terms of interpersonal relationships and the wider public sphere (Giddens 1992), much recent anthropological literature on intimacy has explored how intimate relations are becoming increasingly transnational and commodified, focusing on cross-border marriages as well as on migrant domestic, care, and sex workers (Constable 1998).

 This panel, in contrast, endeavors to question the established boundaries of intimacy itself, interrogating the limits and possibilities of this often taken-for-granted concept. We ask: what is included in the idea of intimacy? Where are we supposed to draw those borders, and, in drawing them, how might we be limiting understanding? If those frontiers are salient, then what do the margins of intimacy look or feel like? Can intimacy only be understood within a public-private dynamic? Or is it, in fact, a kind of scale-making project (Tsing 2000)? How can a greater attention to men and masculinities as well as queer sexualities complicate and enrich our knowledge of intimacy? What other kinds of intimacies might be found in unexpected places like prisons, hospitals, or battlefields? What is the role of intimacy in ethnographic fieldwork? This panel will explore how the cross-cultural ethnographic study of the intimate reveals different ways of understanding and practicing intimacy that may challenge our assumptions and preconceptions.

Please send abstracts by April 1 to Anna Jaysane-Darr annajay at brandeis.edu and Casey Miller caseyjm at brandeis.edu. While we welcome contributions from a wide range of areas and interests within anthropology, the emphasis of this panel on ethnography means we especially encourage submissions from prospective panelists with substantial fieldwork experience.

Keywords: Intimacy, Borders, Ethnography

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Anna Jaysane-Darr
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology
Brandeis University
Mailstop 006
Waltham, MA 02454
annajay at brandeis.edu