Short Abstract:

As EASA approaches its 30th anniversary, what of the future of the field? Founder members and veterans of the EASA will table new - or revived - ideas, themes, questions and concerns for debate and research.

Long Abstract:

Michal Buchowski, Other times, other challenges and other anthropologies

Anthropologists in Europe came together in the EASA in 1990, precisely at the end of Cold War. Relative optimism lasted for two decades. Recently we find ourselves confronted with new challenges, new configurations of power and class divisions, growing xenophobia, islamophobia in particular, and rising nationalism. What are our individual and collective research and ethical obligations in this new context?

Kirsten Hastrup, Changing landscapes: Practising anthropology in a fluid world

Ours is a world of massive population movements, shifting landscapes, exponential population growth, and potentially catastrophic climate change. A truly contemporary ethnography must make connections between multiple social scales, diverse temporalities, and widely separated places.

Ulf Hannerz, Whistleblowing: Anthropology as Public Commentary

At a time when human diversity is increasingly part of many people's daily experience, through mobility and the media, anthropologists can perform a public service by fostering understanding, and criticizing misrepresentations. And we had better engage, for our own sakes as well, to improve public understanding of what our discipline is now about.

Adam Kuper, Whatever happened to kinship?

Kinship is now hardly studied or taught any longer, except i as an account of ideological constructions of common 'substance', or even more loosely, by way of generalised talk of 'relationships'. But we need to talk about kinship again in order to understand international migration, global businesses, revolutionary changes in gender relationships, and the return of dynastic politics. And, of course, families.

Shalini Randeria, To be announced.