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- Convenors:
-
Stuart McLean
(University of Minnesota)
Johann Sander Puustusmaa (York University / NomadIT)
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- Chair:
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Wesley Brunson
(University of Toronto)
- Discussants:
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Stuart McLean
(University of Minnesota)
Zihan Xu (University of Cambridge)
- Formats:
- Panel
Short Abstract
Do conference panels inevitably rely on polarization? Can this be challenged or subverted? Participants will explore polarization by experimenting with alternative formats for sharing and engaging with scholarly work: dialogic, dramatic, ritualistic, multimedia, or combinations of these.
Long Abstract
Do conference panels inevitably reproduce, or have they the potential to challenge the various polarizations that increasingly characterize the contemporary world? Are panels inescapably reliant on individuated presenters and presentations, on clearly marked divisions between speakers and audience, and on the demarcation of ethnography’s famously messy knowledge-making practices from the more orderly academic venues where their results are usually shared? Are some of these retained by newer, shorter conference formats like lightning talks? If so, do the formal constraints of academic conferences reproduce or even reinforce other polarizations (economic, ethnic, political, racial), along with the strict boundaries between selves and others that they mobilize and the hierarchical and authoritarian political projects that these frequently underwrite? Could we imagine other, more relational modes of differentiation? For this “panel” we seek participants who are willing not merely to discuss but to performatively explore alternatives to polarization in the conference setting itself, including through engagement with other genres and media. Submissions should describe a polarization they wish to explore. Presenters will meet virtually in advance of the conference to collectively devise a performance/audiovisual format through which to share their work, interact with one another, and, if possible, elicit direct audience participation. Possibilities include (but are not limited to) dialogic, dramatic, ritualistic, kinaesthetic, and multimedia formats (or shifting combinations of these), in which distinctions between individual voices and between speakers and addressees are rendered porous, and in which a more fluid and playful exchange of differences takes the place of stark dichotomization. The idea is to inhabit the conventional space and occasion of an academic panel while actively challenging and subverting some of its habituated constraints. Panelists and audience will be asked not only to reflect upon but to enact more generative alternatives to the multiple polarizations seeking to capture and define us.
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper short abstract
This contribution offers silent physical presence as a means to question whether the focus on cramming programmes with as many presentations of academic work as possible precludes possibilities for more meaningful, personal, and truly present engagement at conferences.
Paper long abstract
Academic conferences provide spaces for researchers to come together with those who share their interests. They allow us to be physically present with each other to share ideas and form social bonds. Conferences are also a professional requirement. We are expected to disseminate our findings and rack up a list of conference contributions as part of a well-rounded portfolio of scholarly outputs. They become part of a productivity-focused academic grind culture: even when we feel we have little to say, we must make sure we produce always outputs. This results in conferences stuffed to the gills with panel discussions where we have no time to engage meaningfully with each other because the convenors wanted to fit in an extra presentation so there’s only 5 minutes for questions and then we have to run to the next panel, the next keynote. What, then, is “present” in these presentations? Is it human beings, or is it merely their work? But what if we said a little less, and tried to be a little more present as people, to revive the conference as a space for convivial togetherness rather than an event at which to register one’s presence to add a line to the CV? This contribution draws on techniques of silent presence drawn from my clown training: instead of an addition to the academic noise, I offer you my presence. By sitting quietly with the audience, I explore polarisations between absence and presence, speaking and listening, communicating and engaging.
Paper short abstract
Actor1: Do conference panels inevitably rely on polarization? A2: No. (tense music) A1: Can this polarization be challenged/subverted? A3: Hope so. A2: I think about an anthropological drama. Someone to document it. A director. A camera. A3: Yup, to bring in conferences the performances. (bass tone)
Paper long abstract
PROLOGUE
A1: Do conference panels inevitably reproduce, or have they the potential to challenge the various polarizations that increasingly characterize the contemporary world?
A2: If I didn’t believe the challenge potential existed, I wouldn’t be here.
A1: Are panels inescapably reliant on individuated presenters, clear speaker–audience divisions, and the separation of ethnography’s messy knowledge from orderly academic venues?
A3: I don’t have an exact answer, but I’ve heard anthropology’s ideal to blur the lines.
(Applause)
A1: And about newer, shorter conference formats like lightning talks?
A2: Well… sometimes fewer is better; sometimes fewer is only fewer.
A1: Do the formal constraints of academic conferences reproduce or even reinforce other polarizations alongside the strict boundaries between selves and others that they mobilize and the hierarchical and authoritarian political projects these frequently underwrite?
A4: Sure, but… Don’t you feel that we’re simulating a focus group? And now I’m even breaking the fourth wall… This is already a transformation!
A1: Could we imagine other, more relational modes of differentiation?
A2: Think so. Someone says EASA 2026 might be a good opportunity to stage them.
(laughter)
A3: We can start with irony and the willingness to play...
A2: …and no wall with the audience.
(Applause)
A4: And what about the gap between fieldwork dialogue and co-creation, and the ways our research gets standardized when we present it.
(Silence)
A2: Yeah…
A3: … very sad.
A1: Guess we’ve outlined something, don’t you think?
To be continued… (See you, space cowboy).
Paper short abstract
Examining the format and veiled assumptions of conference panels, this presentation show the moral panic present in academic-scientific discourse when referring to schismogenic-driven social dynamics as in the case of the Ballermann, the well-known German party tourism in Mallorca, Spain.
Paper long abstract
How does anthropological discourse position itself in relation to social dynamics marked by polarization? How can anthropological understanding fall into the trap of victimization? Does the panel of experts tend to exacerbate polarization in a social phenomenon? In this presentation, I seek to challenge the anthropological discourse on party tourism in Majorca, Spain. It is based on 15 months of fieldwork among tourist and local communities between 2019 and 2023 (including over 500 hours of recordings in party settings and 2,000 photographs). In the particular case of German Ballermann party tourism, due to the maximization and specialization of the party, the anthropological discourse paradoxically tends to deepen the polarization instead of offering a global understanding of the festive phenomenon and its participants. Faced with this unusual “desperate denial of recognition” (Graeber 2005, 415) that anthropology experiences in the face of certain problems, it is necessary to explore its own epistemological assumptions and fallacies (Bateson 1972, 495). Exploring the conference panel, the quintessential space for communication, is a viable option. That is why, using the aforementioned audiovisual material, as well as "lost objects" from fieldwork, I seek to combine communicative modalities to, in a single movement, convey the phenomenological intensity of the Ballermann festival, while simultaneously dismantling the epistemic and moralizing assumptions that hinder a true understanding of the phenomenon.
Paper short abstract
A disciplinary meeting with a captain of a container ship during fieldwork is replayed as a polarizing drama, where authority, care, and mutiny perform a "power play" in the "theatre of command", and with roles, rules, and claims to mastery to be reworked, replayed, experimented with collectively.