CFP AAA: RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY AMONG COLLECTIVE AND CORPORATE PERSONS

[Jessica Lowen]

***** Please circulate widely. *****


*CFP AAA: RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY AMONG COLLECTIVE AND CORPORATE PERSONS*

This proposed AAA panel explores the tension between the way that rights
and responsibilities are conceptualized in relation to individual persons
versus other conceptions of multiple, collective, or social personhood.
While one example of this tension is the recent political move to expand
the doctrine of corporate personhood in the U.S., submissions need not be
limited to analysis of neoliberal legal doctrine. This CFP invites
submissions that explore historic or ethnographic examples of multiple
personhood (broadly defined) that have "human" rights implications.
Submissions are invited from all geographic, cultural, and time periods.
Please send paper abstracts (250 word max) to panel organizer Jessica Lowen
at jcclowen at umich.edu by APRIL 8, 2014.

Anthropological studies that highlight the collective, intersubjective,
multiple aspects of personhood have often been relevant to more general
conversations about "ethics" and/or public debates about "who" or "what"
counts as a person. For example: the dialogic emergence of morality (Hill
1995 and Keane 2011), linguistic stance and social power (Irvine 1993),
spirit possession in legal court trials (Paul Johnson 2014), competing
conceptions of corporate personhood before and after Citizens United (Matt
Hull 2013), and the legal vs. kinship status of frozen embryos (Roberts
2012). This panel builds on this tradition by exploring how collective
persons are defined in legal, religious, and/or medical systems, resulting
in beliefs about their real existence apart from discourse. Submissions are
encouraged from scholars who study diverse themes related to personhood
(subjectivity, embodiment, intersectionality, etc.) and who hail from
various subfields (medical, legal, linguistic, and semiotic approaches) but
who share a common commitment to questions of social and political power.

Potential sets of questions include, but are not limited to, the following:

   - How might multiple persons occupy the same entity? Conversely, how
   might a single person exist in multiple spaces or entities? What
   technologies, practices, and operations make this occupation possible?


   - How do authoritative systems (legal, medical, religious) define
   instances of legitimate vs. excessive personhood? What are the techniques,
   operations, and domains by which legitimate instances are expanded?
   Conversely, how are excessive instances constrained or reduced? (For
   example: exorcism, excessive frozen embryos, Multiple Personality or
   Dissociative Identity Disorder, etc.)


   -  What kinds rights, standings, or responsibilities do collective
   persons engender for themselves vis-a-vis "natural" persons? And vice versa?


   -  What does the expansion of the doctrine of corporate personhood to
   include protections for speech (e.g. Citizens United vs. FEC) and
   (potentially for) religious expression (e.g. Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby)
   reveal about neoliberal definitions and operations of conscience, religion,
   spirituality, and secularity?


   - What does it mean to attribute intentionality, ethical conscience, or
   religiosity to a corporate person, in contrast with disaggregating the
   diverse and sometimes competing perspectives, identities, responsibilities,
   or motives within a corporation?


*By Tuesday, April 8, potential participants should please send proposed
paper abstracts (250 words max) to Jessica Lowen at jcclowen at umich.edu
<jcclowen at umich.edu>. (Final abstract deadline: April 15, 2014.) *
*Citations:*

Hill, Jane
1995 The Voices of Don Gabriel. In The Dialogic Emergence of Culture.
Tedlock and Mannheim, eds. Pp. 97-111. Urbana: U Illinois Press.

Hull, Matt
2013    Paper presented at CNY HUMANITIES CORRIDOR PANEL DISCUSSION: "Block
that Metaphor? Corporate Personhood Before and After Citizens United".
Cornell University, Ithaca NY (10/7/13).

Irvine, Judith T.
1993    Insult and Responsibility: Verbal Abuse in a Wolof Village. In
Responsibility and Evidence in Oral Discourse. Studies in the Social and
Cultural Foundations of Language; no. 15. Cambridge [England]; New York:
Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, Paul
2014    An Excess of Flesh: One Writer, Two Bodies. Paper presented at:
Excess: The Fifth Annual Symposium of the Interdepartmental Doctoral
Program in Anthropology and History. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
(2/21/14).

Keane, Webb
2011    Indexing Voice: A Morality Tale. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
21(2): 166-178.

Roberts, Liz
2012 God's Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes. University of
California Press.