4th Biennial Conference of the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA)

AMBIGUITY – Call for Panels and Papers

Social anthropology produces a specific kind of knowledge with sensitivity to ambiguities or even contradictions. The deeper anthropologists immerse themselves into local modes of thinking and action, the more likely paradoxes and ambiguities arise and scholars face the challenge of representing them. Such phenomena may be perceived as constitutive parts of social reality, results of semiosis or epistemic orientation of researchers who prefer to reflect upon their doubt and uncertainty. Sensitivity to ambiguity may even embody one of the key features of the discipline. While some anthropological traditions view ambiguity as a foundation and guiding principle of research entangled with indeterminacy of human and non-human agency, others attempt to tame it via causal reasoning, formal graphs or models. Public discourses, which stem from the economy of knowledge requiring clarity and unequivocalness, often suppress ambiguity. They expect results of anthropological research to be translated, evaluated, and applied.

We invite proposals for thematic panels as well as individual papers that would relate to the central theme of the conference. Ambiguity provides an arena for various kinds of anthropological reasoning about the world from ontology to the relationship between anthropology and media. Conference sessions may map various conceptualizations of ambiguity, its epistemic, methodological, or ethical dimensions, impact on research praxis, education or public. Also, we welcome proposals for panels or papers representing current Czech anthropological research that does not directly relate to the central theme of the conference. However, we request authors of such proposals to clearly state this at the time of submission.

PROPOSALS
Proposals should include the names of author(s), institutional affiliation, and abstract (250 words max.) and be submitted via e-mail to 2016conference@casaonline.cz. Authors will be notified within 5 days of the submission deadline about acceptance/rejection of their proposals. Panel organisers are welcome to submit a proposal including a list of participants but are advised to keep the panel open for other proposals throughout the submission period. The list of all panels will be published by July 31 on the web of CASA.

Deadline for panel proposals: July 31

Deadline for paper proposals: August 20