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BASE04a


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Responsibility and blame I 
Convenors:
Riccardo De Cristano (University of bologna)
Marc Brightman (Università di Bologna)
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Format:
Panel
Stream:
BASE (Bodies, Affects, Senses, Emotions)
:
Room K-202
Sessions:
Thursday 16 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

Expressing both moral agency and attribution of blame, and often denoting a position of authority and power, responsibility expresses relational dimensions of ethical subjectivity. We invite papers that explore responsibility in current social and environmental relations.

Long Abstract:

The idea of responsibility has gained currency as a corrective to the excesses and inequities of global capitalism, first as 'corporate social responsibility', and then in 'responsible finance'. It has interested generations of anthropologists, from Max Gluckman's focus on responsibility for misfortune (notably in the context of witchcraft) (1972), to contemporary studies of the relationship between responsibility, risk and accountability (Field 2021), via trenchant critiques of the mystifications of 'corporate social responsibility' (Dolan and Rajak 2016; Smith 2021). The term derives from the Latin 'respondeo': in pre-republican Rome, the pontifex - the highest Roman priest - provided his 'responsum' to citizens asking for legal advice in a ritual procedure contributing to the reproduction of traditional values. A similar reproduction of hierarchies, laws and traditional values may be seen in present day usage of 'responsibility' by political and corporate exercisers of power and authority to legitimise their practices. The idea of responsibility is frequently evoked in political and corporate spheres in relation to climate change and global inequalities, such that, given the link between carbon emissions and wealth accumulation, institutions responsible for global warming assume the responsibility to solve the problem; raising the question of time horizons: blame for past carbon emissions and responsibility towards future generations. Following Laidlaw's (2013) emphasis of the role of institutions and practices in shaping the attribution of responsibility, we invite papers that examine this role ethnographically, on topics such as: climate finance, environmentalism, CSR, medicine, new technologies, inequality.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Thursday 16 June, 2022, -
Panel Video visible to paid-up delegates