[Linganth] CFP AAA 2016: “Anthropologists as Objects of Social Inquiry: Anthropologies by Non-Anthropologists in Ethnographic Encounters”

[Jonathan DeVore]

*Please forward.*


*CFP:  Panel Proposal for the 115th Annual Meeting of the American
Anthropological Association*



*“Anthropologists as Objects of Social Inquiry:  Anthropologies by
Non-Anthropologists in Ethnographic Encounters”*



>From the standpoint of social semiotic theory, the dawning of the “self”
concept is an inference that arises through interaction with others.  This
is to say that “self” and “other” are always interwoven, and that
interacting with others can have transformative consequences for concepts
of self and society.  This idea is not new to anthropology, as the
discipline may be thought of as an enduring reflection on the self-other
nexus.  Over the past several decades, anthropologists have shifted
attention from efforts to construct (“objective,” “etic”) models of
“native” others, and moved to consider the ways in which the ethnographic
encounters are shaped by anthropologists’ own “native” categories and
perceptions.  Some, meanwhile, have suggested that the enterprise of
anthropology itself is less a study of the “other” than it is a reflection
on the “self” (or “modernity,” “the West,” etc.) that proceeds by way of
engaging and constructing the “other.”



This panel turns this last observation on its head to explore the various
ways in which research subjects may draw researchers into their own
anthropological inquiries.  For research subjects, ethnographers are often
difficult to place in the social world.  In many contexts, ethnographers
appear to come from relatively privileged backgrounds, for example, in
their seemingly limitless ability to travel the world or their
hyper-educational attainment as “doctors” of philosophy (often in
training).  As such, ethnographers may resemble social elites.  At the same
time, the roles that often seem to fit ethnographers the best are those
that are appropriate to neophytes, pupils, and perhaps children, above
all.  In short, ethnographers may simultaneously appear to inhabit roles
that are inconsistent, contradictory, or conflicting—or perhaps no
identifiable social role at all.



In keeping with the 115th Annual Meeting theme of “Evidence, Accident,
Discovery,” the papers on this panel focus on instances of social
interaction in which research subjects may draw upon, deploy, and employ
ethnographers as objects and instruments in local projects of social
inquiry and critique.  Contributions will develop ideas of social-role
“malfunction” and indeterminacy to explore the potentially troubling and
unsettling presence of ethnographers in ethnographic research contexts, and
the affordances that these failures provide for new projects of social and
self-formation.  Such unsettling not only occurs because the ideas,
technologies, and social practices that ethnographers bring with them to
the field may influence or disrupt extant social relationships, but rather
because ethnographers’ various failures to inhabit social roles may
unwittingly help to draw latent social contradictions, conflicts, and
tensions into relief.  As such, ethnographers may come to occupy the
category of “other” in local projects of self and social reckoning.



Please send a title and abstract of up to 250 words to Jonathan DeVore:

jonathan.devore at yale.edu or devorejd at umich.edu (suggested subject line:
“AAA Abstract”)



Please send paper proposals by April 1st.  Accepted papers will be notified
by April 3rd.  Full panel proposals will be due by April 15th.
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