Taking inspiration from the enormous success of the laboratories organised at the most recent European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) biennial conference in Tallinn, Estonia, ASA15 has provided space for producing and presenting ethnographic works that depart from the convention of the text-based presentation. The laboratories will provide occasions for experimentation, encouraging ‘symbiotic’ knowledge exchange through a range of visual, acoustic and performative methods. The intention of the laboratories is to explore methodological and epistemological possibilities of carrying out and presenting anthropological research collaboratively, through dynamic and reciprocal exchange. Laboratories endeavour to:
- explore non-textual and non-linear presentations of anthropological knowledge
- entail collaborative forms of presentation as an alternative to the individualistic approach to the scholarly presentation
- offer experiential presentations that are characterised by action and participation
- produce an immersive environment where people share insights and skills, and experiment without a definitive idea of what might emerge.
The selection committee bore the following criteria in mind when selecting laboratories for ASA15:
- Interactive activity: The laboratory should be a site where there is an activity or process, rather than a presentation of research findings.
- Collaboration: laboratories should have a collaborative dimension – preferably though not limited to a form of collaboration between an anthropologist and another practitioner (e.g. designers, sound artists, engineers, activists, performance artists, urban planners, architects). - Embedded: proposals that find ways to embed themselves into the conference’s events and milieu. For example, proposals should take into account how the laboratories will have an impact on the physical site or on the delegates’ experience of the conference.
- Ethnography: proposals should show a commitment to the complexities of ethnography as it regards the ways of articulating the human experience in the world.
There will be two laboratories
L01 Dream literacy workshop
Laboratories
L01 Dream literacy workshop
Convenor: Iain Edgar (Durham University)Room 12: Tue 14th Apr, 14:00-15:30, Wed 15th Apr, 14:45-16:15
There are few, if any, dream theory sensitivity, practice and interpretive training programs available in the world for social science researchers. Yet ‘dream literacy’ has been identified by Tedlock (1991) as a core skill in the study of cultures with significantly different notions of reality and dream compared to the west. Indeed some anthropologists, such as Guedon (1994), have found that dream awareness and sharing was essential to an in-depth study of the culture they studied. This workshop will facilitate working and researching with dreams across cultures, using imaginative methods (Edgar 2004). The workshop offers researchers the collaborative opportunity to experientially sensitise themselves to indigenous dreamworlds, a variety of core dream interpretative traditions and the role of their own dreams in fieldwork and the reflexive dimension of their studies.
L03 Mutual anthropologies: developing some
reciprocal approaches to research
Convenors: Joy Hendry (Oxford Brookes University); Yuko Shioji (Hannan University); Will Tuladhar-Douglas (University of Aberdeen)
Room 11: Thu 16th Apr, 09:15-10:45, 11:15-12:45
At the IUAES meeting in Tokyo last May, a panel of six participants considered the advantages of comparing the approaches of anthropologists who had worked in each other’s home territories. Probably because of the location, most of the panelists were Japanese, who had worked in Europe (Germany, Spain and England), but two invited Europeans had worked in Japan, and one project involved cooperation between Japanese and Americans on a museum-based material culture project in England. We talked of the advantages of the shared approach, and the way this kind of mutual exchange can benefit the discipline by offering a relatively equal and unbiased forum for building mutual understanding without the disadvantages associated with historical legacies of, for example, colonialism. Japanese scholars examine the Enlightenment categories and presuppositions that structure European anthropology as they open their papers, and one co-convenor, Joy Hendry, works with indirect forms of communication, such as wrapping, politeness, clothes, use of space, and the organization of time. For this laboratory, we invite proposals collaboratively to look at the influence of other indigenous intellectual traditions on the way that scholars see the world they seek to analyze. One example from co-convenor Will Tuladhar-Douglas, who works in Nepal, is to consider Buddhist ideas of anthropology, or even a “garland of anthropologies”, and we propose a laboratory to encourage mutuality, to avoid the limitations of text-based presentations, and to be open to all possibilities for demonstration and discussion. The laboratory is open to all comers to participate.
Laboratories Social and civil engineering for the common good: is there such a thing as Mutual Applied Anthropology?
Bruce White
Do applied anthropologists share a mutual space of analysis and practice with others engaged in the development of the “infrastructure” of societies such as priests, artists, civil and social engineers, and local and national leaders?
Mutuality in the Taniguchi Symposia on “Japanese civilization in the modern world” Hirochika Nakamaki (Suita City Museum)
The Symposia were held 17 times at Minpaku during 1983-1998. Each had about 12
participants who were consisted of Japanese scholars and scholars from abroad. The symposia were conducted in Japanese and its purpose was to better understand modern world by throwing a card of Japanese civilization.
Tell me a good story: methodologies for disrupting the flow of knowledge Zoe Todd (Aberdeen)
Metis scholar David Garneau (personal communication, 2011) urges Métis scholars to think critically about their position vis-a-vis the academy. This lab explores reciprocal methods (Garneau’s ‘thought trade’, Donald’s ‘Indigenous Métissage’ and ‘ethical relationality’) to disrupt the flow of knowledge.