The Commission on Urban Anthropology,

International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences,

 

Call for Papers:

 

These panels/sessions, supported by the Commission on Urban Anthropology, are asking for papers to be presented at the next

THE 16^TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES

 

To be held in Kunming, China, July 15-23, 2008

 

Session 1: Social Encounters of Cultural Diversity in Urban Areas

 

Cultural diversity is being used as symbolic material in building social relationships, and out of it we produce and shape our everyday life.

-How do we produce and transform cultural diversity into significant symbolic material?

-How do we shape social relationships with this symbolic material?

What we are looking for with this proposal are analysis of specific urban contexts and case-studies which let us address these questions compare our conclusions in order to understand how  these processes take place.

We will like to focus the analysis on urban contexts for two reasons: a) cities are where cultural diversity first and mainly meets, and b) cities are power centers where the answers to address cultural diversity are put to text first, and become institutionalized afterwards. But we will also welcome and encourage proposals which would challenge or contradict these ideas.

The coordinators of the session will offer different case-studies from Spain, since we think the process of recent immigration which has taken place in Spain since 1980ss provides us with a well fitted urban contexts to analyze how these process take place, and also because policies to address diversity have been improvised to a great deal, challenged by the fast pace of the immigration. Nevertheless, our main aim is to provide an open forum in which we could compare the cases from Spain with analyses from elsewhere in the world, and specially from China, since China has developed a strong and broad rural social structure well centered in state policies.

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Margarita del Olmo (Spanish Council for Scientific Research) mdelolmo@ile.csic.es

Caridad Hernández (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) cariher@edu.ucm.es

 

Session 2: Migration and Transnational Domestic Units in European and North American Cities

 

Current migratory flows develop new social-cultural patterns such as transnational families. Based on ethnographic research this panel seeks to analyze the different strategies developed by immigrants settling in the European and North American urban areas to re-shape their domestic units. The immigrant´s modes  of incorporation into the  host societies affect these configurations to such an extent that the pre-migratory cultural  patterns and those acquired in the host society affect in the transnational domestic unit configurations.

Mass migration to Europe and North America -mostly to urban areas- has become one of the most significant migratory movements during the last decades. Thousands of new immigrants undertake the trip toward these regions seeking to improve their family life conditions. Economic and political factors as well as social network.

development explain the importance of these migratory flows, their continuity, and current transnational social-cultural effects.

Many Asian, African, and Latin American workers begin their migratory processes without legal documents, in search of work in the lowest wage labor market in the European and North American urban areas: Menial jobs in the domestic, construction, and service industries.  These immigrant flows have maintained until now by social networks, which have been developing during the last decades, making  many immigrants  cross several national borders before arriving to the host societies in both Europe and North America. Drawing on ethnographic research,  this panel seeks to contribute to the understanding of  immigrants' adaptation to European and North American cities by underlining the following main aspects. First,  how immigrants' modes of incorporation into these areas -defined by immigration law, labor market, and social networks- explain transnationalism as a new pattern of immigrants´ adaptation to the host societies. Second, how these displacements confirm the links that several empirical studies have underscored connecting global structural changes with the growth of transnationalism. Therefore, this panel will analyze these migratory movements and their settlements highlighting the structural and cultural factors that propel these immigrants to develop transnational social configurations -such as transnational families- in order to overcome the structural and cultural barriers that they have to face in both the sending and receiving societies.

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Raúl Sánchez Molina (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) ersanchez@fsof.uned.es

Elena Hernández Corrochano (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) ehernandez@fsof.uned.es

Nancy Konvalinka (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) nkonvalinka@fsof.uned.es

 

Session 3: Urbanization and Urban Poor

 

Urban areas are known to be more as consumers of population than its producers. Population of a city grows through birth as well as migration, but they account for a significant growth of the urban population. In fact, migration contributes largely in the growth of the towns or cities. This migration is from urban and more from rural areas. The growth of large cities in developing countries has not been planned. Thus, a vast urban population lives in slums or squatters settlements. This profile of urban population outlines the great urban challenge facing India and many other developing countries. Instead of looking at the urban poor as liabilities to the city authorities, they could be viewed as assets to the city if their skill can be properly utilised.

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

 

Session 4: The Impact of Demographic Growth on Global Change: Urban Dynamics, Migration and the Management of Resources

 

Over the last few centuries the human population has increased exponentially. Having reached one billion in 1835, it doubled in 1925. Today, by a six-fold increment in less than eight generations, we are six billion people unequally distributed on the Planet. The increment rate has been two times in Europe, seven in Africa, four in North America, ten in South America, four in Asia and six on Oceania. The increasing movement of population across internal and international borders compounds on the problem. The application of new technologies to energetic and nutritional resources will help to address the problem. Faced with the current demographic, energetic and nutritional crisis, Mankind appears to be increasingly dependent on the development of new technologies for its survival. It appears equally necessary to develop a radically new thinking and ethical set up.

Urban dynamics reflect key aspects of this problem as they significantly influence national and international policies addressing human and natural resources: mega-cities in particular have become crucial arenas for the management of such resources. Rulers are increasingly seen as unaccountable and distant autocrats who mismanage law and economic policy.

Migration is an increasingly significant phenomenon. The empirical study of the significant demographic, socio-cultural and bio-medical situation will help to address the key issue that it is not enough for rulers to encourage multiculturalism. However well meant, such encouragement has often been rejected at the grassroots. It has been received as an ethically doubtful attempt by 'the powerful' to ride roughshod over citizens' culture and interests. Failure in coming to terms with the cultural, political and economic problems that underpin this phenomenon raises the perspective of global disaster.

Management of resources (natural, cultural and economic) in the face of exponential demographic growth and increase in migration need to be subjected to radical revision. Human rights and a balanced eco-system must be priorities of political and economic action. Responsible politics must be seen to be legitimate. It badly needs to address the blurring of the dividing line between the legitimate and the illegitimate, for such blurring is seriously undermining the relationships between those who have the power to make critical decisions and those who have to cope with the practical effects of such decisions.

It is our duty as Anthropologists to produce informed proposals to satisfy the criteria of accountability and efficiency that make responsible politics. This Academic Session aims at structuring the aforementioned radical revision. Given the geopolitical importance of such an effort, the collective findings could have broad theoretical significance and applicability, particularly in the terms of governance and global bioethics.

The Convenors plan:

1.      To circulate the Outline of this Session to relevant Commissions of the IUAES and to potentially interested colleagues;

2.      To disseminate the findings through the media and academic publications in the form

       of edited volumes and Special Issues of peer-reviewed Journals (International Journal

       of Anthropology and Global Bioethics).

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Brunetto Chiarelli (Institute of Anthropology, Università degli Studi di Firenze,Italy) antropos@unifi.it

Italo Pardo (University of Kent, UK) i.pardo@kent.ac.uk

Giuliana Prato (Co-Chairperson Commission on Urban Anthropology, IUAES; University of Kent, UK) g.b.prato@kent.ac.uk

 

Session 5: Creative Capacity: Cultural Diversity as Potencial and Problem in South Pacific Cities

 

Cities are recognised as key centres of intercultural encounters and dialogues, constituting compact spaces where the myriad facets of interculturality become manifest. This is particularly evident in cities of Australasia and the island countries of the South Pacific, where exchange and mobility have been crucial features since historical times. Globalisation processes intensified these characteristics and resulted in increased cultural diversity and wide ranging transnational linkages. In this session, the consequences and implications of cultural diversity will be critically reviewed. Special attention is given to the potentials and problems, to creative capacities and constraints of cultural diversity in cities from broadly three angles: representation, cultural politics and spatial perception. Comparative and reflective anthropological contributions addressing these issues in contemporary societies are welcome.

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Eveline Dürr (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand) Eveline.Duerr@aut.ac.nz

 

Session 6: Metropolitan Indians and Ethnic Citizens in America

 

In the last decades, we are attending an accelerated transformation of the models of symbolic, economic and cultural relations that take place between the field and the city. The globalization is making disappear the borders between the topics that can be considered urban and the rural ones, and the prevailing multiculturalism has vivified the relations between the urban ethnic groups and their bases of autochthony.

 

In the case of America, the indigenous populations live more and more in the cities and this do not mean necessarily their adhesion to a new identity. On one hand, the urban life cannot anymore be identified with a "modern life", and frequently the citizens are looking for new shapes of "primitivism". It is common, at present, that the urban complexity is watched in the mirror of the "primitive diversity" of therapies, religions, arts, corporal techniques, models of family or sexuality, and so on. In certain way, the classic idea of the gradual transit between the folk and the urban is now questioned.

 

This symposium will deal with the two aspects in which that process can be appreciated: the urbanization of the ethnic groups and the demand of ethnic metaphors for the new urban configurations.

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Oscar Calavia Sáez (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil) occs@uol.com.br

María García Alonso (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain) mgarciaal@fsof.uned.es

 

Session 7: Children's Circulation in and between Contemporary Urban Worlds: Migration, adoptions, fosterage, travel, traffic.

 

This Academic Session will explore the conditions and results of quantitative and qualitative research on formal, legal, informal and illegal Children Circulation in and between Urban Worlds. in most European countries -also in Spain- the social and legal regulations vis-à-vis non-European immigrants and adoptees vary enormously; as does the general attitude of the populations at large. While considerations about immigrants are more and more controversial, there is a positive discrimination towards babies and children being adopted from other countries. While immigration laws are becoming more and more restrictive all the time, in the adoption laws there is a tendency to ease the process. Public administrations are cautious and conservative when it comes to immigration issues. However, they are collaborative and even propose strategies in order to make the adoption process more flexible. As researchers in social anthropology in charge of developing projects on two close areas concerning children's experiences of mobility and social relations, immigration and international adoptions, which started being integrated at the Institute of Childhood and Urban World (CIIMU), we are aware of the importance of meeting and working with sociologists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, politicians, historians, demographers, creative writers, filmmakers, philosophers, physicians, lawyers, etc. at this Academic Session. We believe that multidisciplinary and comparative approaches are the best way to analyse and understand the different kinds of Children Circulation in Contemporary Urban Worlds.

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Diana Marre (Institute of Childhood and Urban World, CIIMU, Barcelona, Spain) Diana.marre@ciimu.org

Silvia Carrasco (Institute of Childhood and Urban World; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) silvia.carrasco@uab.es

 

Session 8: Cities in Conflict and Cities of Conflict

 

This Session on "Cities in Conflict and Cities of Conflict" is one of the sessions organized under the auspices of the Commission on Urban Anthropology (IUAES). The Session is jointly organized by the Commission on Urban Anthropology and the International Association of Southeast European Anthropology (InASEA).

The Session addresses conflicts that arise from cultural diversity and that affect humanity worldwide; that is, beyond the interaction of the specific groups involved in the conflict. It will focus on Cities in Conflict and Cities of Conflict. It aims at stimulating debate and ethnographically informed comparative analysis on this increasingly important topic that will contribute significantly to disciplinary debate and to the advancement of anthropological knowledge.

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Giuliana Prato (Co-Chairperson Commission on Urban Anthropology, IUAES; University of Kent, UK) g.b.prato@kent.ac.uk

Vesna Vucinic-Neskovic (President of InASEA, University of Belgrade, Serbia) vvucinic@f.bg.ac.yu

 

Session 9: Socialism, Liberalism and the Urban Question

 

This session aims at stimulating debate on issues of substantive citizenship, identity, social and ethnic interactions in the project of multiculturalism, the relationship between the public and the private, and that between the rulers and the ruled, also raising issues of legitimacy and responsibility in the management of power and political decision-making.

Different political ideologies, such as Socialism and Liberalism, have influenced notions of citizenship and the ways in which people's participation in the decision-making process has been either encouraged or frustrated. These two ideologies have been portrayed, respectively, as a modified version of the Jacobean nationalist project and as a servant  of market capitalism.

Similar to the Jacobean project, which rejected rival loyalties to the nation-state, the Communist version of Socialism does not accept rival loyalties to their god, proletarian dictatorship. In such contexts, citizenship has become an abstract concept based on a formal, rather than substantive, definition that apparently granted political rights while aiming at affirming a superior 'neutrality' of values and lifestyles and at manufacturing people's unquestioning loyalty to their rules.

On the contrary, Liberalism advocates the individual's entrepreneurial role in the political, cultural and economic development of society. Classical Liberalism has been concerned with urban problems, such as poverty, housing and education, arguing for minimum state intervention to give individuals an opportunity to develop their potentialities and improve their social position, thus benefiting society.

The geo-political events of the late-twentieth century, have brought about a resurgence of neo-Liberal approaches based on tolerance, pluralism, individual freedom and opportunity for all. However, as exemplified by the ill-thought-out multicultural project, not always the Liberal ideals of tolerance, respect of human rights, and freedom have produced positive results. In such a situation, the city has become a crucial arena for the renegotiation of citizenship and of the democratic process.

This complex situation increasingly affects urban and national life across the world and needs to be urgently understood and addressed specifically and comparatively. Given their commitment to in-depth and detailed empirical research, anthropologists are particularly well suited to offer invaluable insights into such a complexity. This session will bring together ethnographically varied contributions in an attempt to build up an informed comparative understanding.

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Italo Pardo (University of Kent, UK) i.pardo@kent.ac.uk

Giuliana Prato (Co-Chairperson Commission on Urban Anthropology, IUAES; University of Kent, UK) g.b.prato@kent.ac.uk

 

Session 10: New gateway Cities: Port Cities Renewed. A comparative and Theoretical Perspective

 

During the last years, port cities have recovered a new centrality. Some of the old, industrial port cities have recovered a new role in global commerce by means of containers and new logistics based on computer and communication technologies; some have built new roles and images of the cities out of derelict port structures located at the very core of the city; and a few have successfully mingled both transformations. In any case, these reshaped cities aim at a new concept of gateway cities or communities whose global role is difficult to envision in purely abstract terms. What are the consequences these new urban spaces have on the human communities that inhabit them? How this supposedly global forms are able to decontextualize and recontextualize across diverse social and cultural forms?

This session addresses such theoretical issues in global and local contexts. The aim of this session is to focus in a as wide array of case studies as possible dealing with the social and cultural dimensions of port renewal and transformation.

 

This session is coordinated and would be chaired by:

Fernando Monge (Chairperson, Commission on Urban Anthropology, IUAES; Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain) fmonge@fsof.uned.es