Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.

Cog07


Throwing together ways of being/meaning: recursive anthropology at the cusp of a paradigm change [Roundtable] 
Convenors:
César Enrique Giraldo Herrera (Leibniz-ZMT Centre for Marine Tropical Research)
Caroline Gatt (University of Graz)
Discussant:
Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen)
Formats:
Panels
Stream:
Cognition and evolution
Location:
Examination Schools Room 10
Start time:
19 September, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
Session slots:
1

Short Abstract:

As anthropologists we are increasingly taking seriously the onto/epistemologies of people we work with & that nonhumans are creative & make sense of the world. Through entanglements with other ways of being/meaning papers will explore what these may offer the recursive re-creation of anthropology.

Long Abstract:

In recent decades academia has increasingly acknowledged that disciplines are in need of reformulation in order to transcend rigid distinctions between natural and humanistic subjects of study. In anthropology this has taken two distinct but related forms. There is an unprecedented interest in taking seriously the onto/epistemologies of the people we work with. Consequently, we are acknowledging that nonhumans are creative and make sense of the world. In these projects it is the very constitution of an emergent world that is explored.

While perspectives are widening, anthropocentrism is often barely displaced, preserving the illusion that certain forms of agency and semiosis, such as symbols, are exclusively human. Simultaneously, the emphasis on language in anthropology has been a barrier to taking seriously other onto/epistemologies. However, an earlier sense of the verb "συμβάλλω (sumbállō) — to throw together, to unite their streams when referring to rivers, and paths, to collect, to come together, to meet, to join hands, to twist ropes…" suggests symbols might be more widespread than human exceptionalism allows for. We suggest that the growth of emergence ontologies in academia enables the fruitful throwing together of ecological communities/communities of knowledge, such as indigenous ways of knowing and artistic practice, that were previously considered incommensurable or irrelevant.

We invite papers that, grounded in entanglements with other ways of being/meaning, explore what these may offer to the recursive re-creation of anthropology. How could anthropology reconsider its ecology of practice to take seriously other ways of knowing/being, whether human or other than human?

Accepted papers:

Session 1