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Elizabeth Challiinor has introduced us to the work of Margaret Archer. Hoping to learn more about Archer, I turned to Questia and found Archer's Being Human: The Problem of Agency available there. In the introduction to Being Human, I learned that Archer associates herself with a philosophical movement called Critical Realism.

Critical Realism is said to have begun with the work of Indian-British philosopher Roy Bhaskar. The Wikipedia entry on Bhaskar describes his thinking as follows,

Bhaskar's consideration of the philosophies of science and social science resulted in the development of Critical Realism, a philosophical approach that defends the critical and emancipatory potential of rational (scientific and philosophical) enquiry against both positivist, broadly defined, and 'postmodern' challenges. Its approach emphasises the importance of distinguishing between epistemological and ontological questions and the significance of objectivity properly understood for a critical project. Its conception of philosophy and social science is a socially situated, but not socially determined one, which maintains the possibility for objective critique to motivate social change, with the ultimate end being a promotion of human freedom.

To me this sounds very similar to OAC founder Keith Hart's project in The Human Economy and his constant refrain, the need to return anthropology to its Enlightenment roots, especially Kant. 

Archer herself contrasts Critical Realism with three other major movements in social science, all of which, she says, conflate the agent and society, seen by critical realists as interacting but autonomous entities. Two are reductionist, reducing society to individuals, or seeing individuals as artifacts of society. The third, which she associates with Giddens and Bourdieu, attempts to subsume both in a comprehensive larger system. 

My own first encounter with Critical Realism was The SAGE Handbook of Case-Based Methods, whose contributors discuss various methods for addressing the at least partial autonomy of agents and structures, giving full credit to the reality of both and to that of the material world in which both are situated.

I wonder if anyone else here has encountered Critical Realism and, if so, what they think of it. Or, even if they are totally new to the subject, find the description above tempting enough to join me in looking a bit deeper into what this movement may offer to anthropologists.

Panel Organisers: Richard Rottenburg (rottenburg@eth.mpg.de) and Norman Schräpel (norman.schraepel@ethnologie.uni-halle.de) - Institute of Anthropology and Philosophy, University of Halle (Germany).

In many respects the Global South is often seen as an implicit recipient of science and technology from the West. This perspective is reductive and easily challenged when undertaking careful empirical analyses of technologies and ideas that circulate globally. Global Health is one instance of such a socio-technical assemblage resulting out of the circulation of medical standards, blueprints of know-how, therapeutic techniques, drugs, infrastructures, medical data, etc. However, it is less easy to establish how this global assemblage is put together and what role actors from the Global South play in this context. What exactly does it mean to say that socio-technical agencements of global dimensions are produced in interstitial spaces? This panel calls for papers that follow the diverse involvements of individual and collective actors from the Global South in the processes of design and shaping technologies of global health. We invite papers that follow the ways of how these technologies are established, how they operate and how they mediate the production of scientific, social and economic orders and material infrastructures in and by the Global South. The translation processes of existing technologies (e.g. by unfolding inscriptions and revealing the practices that emerge out of these), the role of experiments (historically and recently) such as clinical trials, or the need to act in settings where resources are limited are a few topics we would like to address.

Please submit your paper directly through the conference website and chose Open Panel #5 (Designing global health technologies in the Global South) on the submission form: http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/ssss/4s12/. Deadline: March 11, 2012.

Panel Organisers: Richard Rottenburg (rottenburg@eth.mpg.de) and Norman Schräpel (norman.schraepel@ethnologie.uni-halle.de) - Institute of Anthropology and Philosophy, University of Halle (Germany).

In many respects the Global South is often seen as an implicit recipient of science and technology from the West. This perspective is reductive and easily challenged when undertaking careful empirical analyses of technologies and ideas that circulate globally. Global Health is one instance of such a socio-technical assemblage resulting out of the circulation of medical standards, blueprints of know-how, therapeutic techniques, drugs, infrastructures, medical data, etc. However, it is less easy to establish how this global assemblage is put together and what role actors from the Global South play in this context. What exactly does it mean to say that socio-technical agencements of global dimensions are produced in interstitial spaces? This panel calls for papers that follow the diverse involvements of individual and collective actors from the Global South in the processes of design and shaping technologies of global health. We invite papers that follow the ways of how these technologies are established, how they operate and how they mediate the production of scientific, social and economic orders and material infrastructures in and by the Global South. The translation processes of existing technologies (e.g. by unfolding inscriptions and revealing the practices that emerge out of these), the role of experiments (historically and recently) such as clinical trials, or the need to act in settings where resources are limited are a few topics we would like to address.

Please submit your paper directly through the conference website and chose Open Panel #5 (Designing global health technologies in the Global South) on the submission form: http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/ssss/4s12/. Deadline: March 11, 2012.

Dear colleagues,

Please find below the call for papers for our panel:

CFP: The Value of the Image: Touristic Resource, Ideological Instrument

TOCOCU 2^nd Biannual Conference

REGIMES OF VALUE IN TOURISM: CONCEPTS, POLITICS, PRACTICES

SION, Switzerland, 2-4 JULY 2012-01-25

Convenors:

FABIOLA MANCINELLI (Universitat de Barcelona)

SAIDA PALOU (Universitat de Girona)

SHORT ABSTRACT: This panel aims to explore the different values, strategies and impacts that lie behind the creation of tourist destination images, taking into account their social and political implications. We encourage a confrontation among  empirical case studies, from all domains of social sciences, that can open a debate about the behaviour of induced images, either from a historical or contemporary perspective, and both from an institutional point of view or through the impacts on local populations.  LONG ABSTRACT: Tourism is a system of production, distribution and consumption of images. Images are important all along the tourist’s experience – as expectations, dreams and impressions in the consumer’s mind, as filters which shape his actual experience and as tangible and intangible memories of the journey. The concept of image thus combine a variety of shifting meanings that can be analyzed from multiple perspectives, as the image is an element of value both in the subjective tourist experience and in the process of creation of destinations.  Among other things, images are not only important instruments for defining and promoting the touristic resources of a territory, but also elements of power in themselves. Destination images combine together different elements – visual, emotional and psychological - which create and articulate a discourse and a form of representation of the identity of people and places they represent. These kinds of induced images can become powerful ideological means, instrumental both to stakeholders and local communities’ members, a circumstance that remains often invisible or insignificant for the tourist. The creation of a destination image is a complex process that involves different kinds of  public and private institutions - local and foreigner - sometimes not directly related to the tourism business: cultural policy makers, heritage site managers etc. The result is very often a hegemonic version of identity, which, although supposed to be plural and heterogeneous, respond to a static, ahistorical and oversimplified version of reality. This produces a variety of effects over local populations, from the appropriation of official narratives to strategies of resistance or negation.  So, while the use of the image allow to exploit specific tangible and intangible elements of a destination, it can serve, at the same time, as an instrument of international promotion of a place, for the definition of its identity and/or for achieving a political and social visibility for its population. For all this, we can assume that tourist image, and tourism in itself, take part in wider processes related to the making of identity.   This panel calls for papers that can help to reveal and understand the different values, strategies and impacts that lie behind the creation of tourist destination images, taking into account their social and political implications. How does the creation of value work in the construction of a destination image? Who participates, directly and indirectly, in its construction and how? Which values govern each process and why? How do images become elements of power? And how do they function as heritage-making strategies? What kind of reactions and effects do they produce on local communities (appropriation, ethnogenesis, resistance)? We encourage a confrontation among  empirical case studies, from all domains of social sciences, that can open a debate about the behaviour of induced images, either from a historical or contemporary perspective, and both from an institutional point of view or through the impacts on local populations. 

CALL FOR PAPERS ENDS 15 MARCH 2012

Further information

fabiolamancinelli@yahoo.it

saida.palou@udg.edu

For full details: CFP Regimes of Value in Tourism, 2-4 July 2012, Sion Switzerland

PANEL: CFP The value of the image: touristic resource, ideological instrument

To propose a paper through the TOCOCU website: ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

I thought some of us might find this useful or interesting!

Dana L. Miller, John W. Cresswell, and Lisa S Olander (1998). "Writing and Retelling Multiple Ethnographic Tales of a Soup Kitchen for the Homeless," Qualitative Inquiry December 1998 4: 469-491.

Abstract:

In this article, the authors narrate three tales about a soup kitchen for the homeless and near-homeless. The authors begin with the realist tale to provide a cultural, ethnographic analysis of the culture of the soup kitchen. The confessional tale emerged from the realist tale, as the authors reflected on their fieldwork experiences and shared their ethnographic study with their qualitative research classes. As the authors presented the study to social justice researchers after leaving the field, the critical tale emerged, leading the authors to interrogate their realist and confessional tales and consider the broader political, social, economic, and symbolic implications of their work. This text also describes how multiple ethnographic tales emerge and are further shaped by the retelling of those tales.

The full article is available as a PDF File on: The Educational Resources Information Center (ED429873). I have also attached it!

If it is true that Human Economy is remedy-for/correction-to/victim-of our machine-like economy and machine-like conceptions of self and society, then there is something in these talks of Ian McGilChrist, someone I just stumbled upon, that needs to finds its way into stories I get to tell others about Human Economy, what it is, why it is, why they should care. I sense a powerful synthesis on the horizon, far beyond my ability to articulate it. I can simply hint at it by inviting you to view these. 

My way of protesting to shutting this group down is to start a new discussion. Is anybody familiar with the work of Margaret Archer, a critical realist who does not appear to have had any significant impact in anthropology? I have been interested in how her theory on the "inner conversation" may contribute towards phenomenological approaches in ethnographic research. Although her distinction between personal and social identity appears to be problematic for social anthropologists, I think she has an interesting argument about how personal identity reflects upon social identity:

 The “I” may be distressed to learn that its “me” is considered to speak with the wrong accent, to be of a disfavoured colour or gender, and that nothing that “I” can immediately do will change matters…As a reflexive monitor, the “I” may squirm inwardly to distance itself from the disfavoured “me”: whether it can eventually do so will depend upon intra-personal, inter-personal and societal factors… (Archer 2000:264).

What do you think?

Hi Everyone,

I'm teaching a new course on Culture and Mortality and am wondering if anyone has any ethnographic film suggestions on this topic? (Anything related to life/ death/ the life cycle/ funerary rituals/ ancestors/ the afterlife, etc.)

Thanks,

Sarah

BOOK REVIEW

The Impossibility of the Self:  An Essay on the Hmong Diaspora

TAPP, N.  2010. The Impossibility of Self: an essay on the Hmong Diaspora. Lit Verlag: Munster, 320pp. €29.90

The book, “The Impossibility of Self: an Essay on the Hmong Diaspora,” is a well thought out book which attempts to place the Hmong self into an anthropological context. The book is separated into four parts.  The first part examines theories and approaches relating to the ‘self’. The second part of the book familiarizes the reader with the Hmong. The third part of the book discusses the changes that relate to Hmong identity and sociality. Finally, in the fourth section, there is an examination of the Miao (the Chinese Hmong) and a critical evaluation of the theories which explore the concept of the self. Tapp spends much time on well-known and sometimes not so well-known works relating to the subject of the self. The book examines the ‘self’ from the point of view that there is a dichotomy of the pre-modern, or production, self and the modern/postmodern, or consumption, self and discusses the different disciplines which have reflected upon the self. The premise of the book is primarily based on the work of D. Bell (1978) and D. Miller (1987; 1993). Bell’s perception of the self is a mirror of the ‘authentic’ while Miller’ perception of the self is that of a decontextualized self. The weakness of the book’s argument is that both Miller and Bell appear to perceive the world from a primarily Western perspective which troubled me throughout the text. However, putting that aside for the moment, let’s examine the text and the positive additions it makes towards Hmong studies and to the greater anthropological discipline.

In the first part of the text, the book examines both anthropological and non-anthropological approaches to the self. Tapp considers how we as practitioners have viewed the self, either from a medieval European model, a classical Unitarian model, a romantic model or as a decontextualized modern, post-modern model.

Part two examines the social-historical context within which the Hmong are situated. Tapp examines how the Hmong’s past, and those voices which have shaped our present-day impressions of them, affected both Hmong perceptions of themselves and how Hmong specialists’ view them. He suggests that the writers of the past had particular frames of reference and objectives that in turn either mystified the Hmong or made assumptions about them. Priest, missionaries, soldiers and ethnographers had particular preconceived thoughts about who and what the Hmong were. Their views are sometimes romanticised images of the Hmong, or sometimes positive or negative, but all have an accumulative effect on the present Hmong and /or others’ opinions[i] about them. Tapp’s main point is that history and historic writings are perceived through the lens of the present[ii]. As a result when one reads about the Hmong or any group, for that matter, the writers’ objectives in the past should be considered. Tapp’s analysis deconstructs common perceived notions of who the Hmong were understood to be.

In the latter chapters of part two Tapp examines the Hmong’s multiplicity of self, as he terms it. He proposes a different conception of ‘self’, which is multiple and contested through the examination of shamanism and funeral rituals contrasting them with globalising trends. Tapp argues that the Hmong have a new selfhood that is fragmented, modernist and textualized, creating a unified self. In addition, new modes of communication, such as mobile phones and internet/email, reinforce connections with distant, far off places and family, to create a borderless Hmong ‘national’ community. This perception of a national identity appears seemingly close to Anderson’s (1984) construction of “imagined communities”[iii]. However, Tapp discusses the Hmong’s national identity as attached to a virtual place, in other words detached.

The third part of the book explores the Hmong as transnationals, as Tapp delves further into their understandings of themselves in the world. Earlier in the text he argues that the Hmong have been part of a globalized world at least since the time of colonialism. However, contemporary Hmong have a vision of themselves with a virtual homeland (since they spread throughout Southern China and Southeast Asia and have had a very long history of being up-rooted). They see themselves tied to a mythical ancestral Chinese homeland, but envisage Laos or Thailand as homelands as well. This portion of the book examines how the Hmong attach themselves to places and formulate relationships either through marriage between transnationals who may have grown up on different parts of the globe. These transnational Hmong use the medium of the internet to reconnect or by visiting places such as China or Thailand to create a common sense of kinship, nationalism, and nostalgia.

Part four of Tapp’s book initially examines the Chinese Hmong, or Miao. Tapp first explores the concept of romanticism in China, which gauges the metaphors of the ethnic other in China. However, historically, romanticism may arguably be based on a European or Western philosophical tradition and, therefore, may be a bit of a problematic fit. Nevertheless, Tapp endeavours to situate Chinese ideologies into a romantic mould. He concludes that aspects of romanticism did not exist before the 19^th and 20^th Century in China. He then, discusses the Miao from a contemporary Chinese perspective. The Chinese perceive the Miao as a romantic primordial Chinese. They are seen by the Chinese as backward and exotic country bumpkins, which has justified national public discourse to deny their participation in the modernisation project. Tapp suggests there is a valorisation/denigration of ethnic minorities at the same time. As a result, he situates Chinese Hmong as an ethnic minority who have a public Chinese self and private Miao self[iv].

In the second half of part four, Tapp challenges the theories regarding the modern self and then removes the Hmong from its contradictory labyrinth. Tapp argues that the ‘self’ defines significance and meaning and that spirituality and ritual secure the meaning of the self. Thus, the Hmong shaman reconstitutes the self in a post-modern world; in a post-modern world, where the self has become referenceless. In contrast, the Self anchored in ritual and religious belief and is the primary foundation of identity for the Hmong where ever they may find themselves in space or time.

In conclusion, Tapp’s attempt at examining the self from an anthropological perspective is daring. However, the most troubling part of the book was the theoretical arguments he decided to use and ignore. Tapp has decided to avoid Eastern perceptions of the self. The Hmong self should be considered from this Eastern philosophical milieu within which they exist. The Hmong, even with religious change and transnational migration, have been able to maintain non-western perspectives as was observed and illustrated by (Fadiman 1997). Tapp, himself, in his earlier work mentions that the Hmong have many shared cosmological aspects with Chinese cosmology such as how they divide the world into a sky world, a living world and underworld (Tapp 1989). This Chinese cosmological aspect and its relationship to the Hmong self has not been investigated in his book. However, if it had, it might suggest that Hmong perceptions of self could be understood very differently and, to some degree, have common cultural representations of the self with those of Chinese philosophical constructions. He does mention Eastern ideas of self, but merely in passing.  

In the conclusion of this book Tapp states that Hmong spirituality and “ritual is the hypostasis which reinserts the self into a timeless and communal narrative of history” (p274). It has been argued by many in Hmong studies that the Chinese/Hmong religious cosmologies and spirituality share some similar foundations. He does suggest that the Chinese self was different and not based in romanticism, but it manifests questions about what the Hmong and Chinese selves have in common, if anything. However, if this omission is overlooked, Tapp makes salient points that might be taken into consideration when doing fieldwork or when (re)examining texts with regards to the Hmong. The text is a good overview of the work done in Hmong studies and although the premise about the ‘self’ is not fully explored, it presents a good place from which to begin thinking about the Hmong self.

Dr. Simeon S. Magliveras, The American College of Greece, Deree College & Nanyang Technical University, Singapore

_________________________________

REFERENCES

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, Verso.

Bell, D. 1978 The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Basic Books. New York

Fadiman, A. (1997). The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York, Farrar, Staus and Giroux.

Frentress, J. and. C. Wickham (1992). Social Memory. Oxford, Blackwell

Herzfeld, M. (1997). Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation - state. New

York, Routlege.

Hirsch, E. and C. Stewart, (2005). "Introduction: Ethnographies of Historicity."

History and Anthropology 16(3): 261-274.

Jenkins, R. (2008). Rethinking Ethnicity: Arguments and Exploration. London, Sage Pub. Ltd.

Miller, D. 1987;1993 Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Basil Black-well, Oxford.

Tapp, N. (1989). "Hmong Religion." Asian Folklore Studies 48(1): 59-94.

Etymology aside. So you know a story behind the roots of a word or you know the meaning of the same word in another language. It’s so subtle and odd and interesting. It’s hidden from so many eyes. Nail an alternative meaning to a word, load it with sentiment and then put it in a joke. So good that it doesn’t matter if anyone else got it. (Nobody asks you to explain a joke).

I’m worried though. Correct someone when they say it wrong - it’s precious, you’ve worked hard on it! And how far are you ready to go? I use words and don’t pronounce them good. I branch out and stumble in the process. I’m not ready to pronounce a type of pasta in Italian. I’m clinging to the bastardised form.

Nooky.

Dear All, 

I am working on Music, Emotions and Identity. Could anyone help me with references for this topic? 

Your assistance will be highly appreciated

Best regards

Chorshanbe

I am Dr Anand Sherwood an Endodontist I am currently pursuing my PhD from university of Madras. My article on Fluctuation Asymmetry in Tooth Root has been published in Dental Anthropology Journal.

Wanted to post it for your comments. Please read the article and give your suggestions. My PhD topic is also about fluctuation asymmetry in root morphology and number. Bye...........DA%20Vol_24_1.pdf

Hello Everyone, 

Members of the group may be interested in the RAI conference coming this June. Below is my call for papers and links to the conference website for more information on the conference in general:

Call for papers: (P25) Can anthropology work for migrants? Anthropology (-ists) at work in charities and NGOs The Royal Anthropological Institute conference 'Anthropology in the World' British Museum, London, UK; 8th - 10th June 2012 **call for papers closes on 16th January 2012** Panel convenor Beata Switek (University College London) Short Abstract This panel looks into the production, dissemination and use of anthropological knowledge in voluntary migrant organisations. It probes the practicalities and morality of ideologically informed anthropological practice in addressing the immediate needs of the organisations and migrants alike. Long Abstract Migration, diversity and integration are high on the agenda of policy-makers and voluntary organisations alike. As national sympathies, economic and political rights and privileges mix in the debates surrounding migration, it remains a highly contested and politicised area. Organisations working with and on behalf of migrants through such engagement place themselves on a specific side of the ideological barricade. Anthropology on the other hand, has been determined to remain as politically or ideologically neutral as possible. Yet anthropologists assume professional positions in politically non-neutral organisations working on behalf of migrants where the anthropology they 'do' is explicitly harnessed towards achieving politicised goals. How do, therefore, anthropologists reconcile their inculcated commitment to value-free thinking with the need to position their work in support of migrants' interests and in opposition to the world-views represented by other agents such as state institutions or the host society's values? What tactics help anthropologists negotiate the rigour of 'academic anthropology' based on prolonged ethnographic research and the need for tuning it to the requirements of a temporal immediacy of the migrants' lives? Is such 'humanitarian anthropology' possible? Finally, what are the risks related to the interpretation, dissemination and use of ethnographic knowledge in the working context of migrant-focused organisations, and what is the scope of the anthropological responsibility for the end results of the actions taken on the basis of the knowledge produced? This panel welcomes contributions from anthropologists working 'on migration' within and without academia. Paper-based talks, visual presentations, demonstrations, and other formats are welcome. Abstracts submission guidelines: - submission is possible only through the RAI 'Anthropology in the World' website: http://www.nomadit.co.uk/rai/events/rai2012/panels.php5?PanelID=1426 - proposals should consist of a paper title, a short abstract of less than 300 characters, and an abstract of 250 words - for more information please visit: http://www.therai.org.uk/conferences/anthropology-in-the-world/call-for-papers/

Call for Papers! Sonic Work: Special Issue of JPMS on Music, Labor, Value  Marina Peterson, Jesse Shipley, Guest Editors We are interested in papers from a variety of academic fields and sonic contexts that address issues of music, labor, and value broadly conceived. Making music involves labor of various sorts, whether playing an instrument, chopping up a sample, laying down lyrics, or performing for an audience. These practices resonate in and with urban and transnational soundscapes. Taking into account the changing technologies of production, circulation and listening, making music connects in literal and metaphoric ways to making money and making a living. At the same time, music is posited as detached from so-called worldly values in various ways-religious music is taken to be spiritually transformative, popular music is often escapist, courtly music is understood as linking political power to various ideas of aesthetic beauty. Yet in all of these cases, music converts aesthetic value into material value in various ways. And while some musicians struggle to maintain control of their music away from the effects of commodification, others strive for fame and fortune and seek to brand and package their music for mass consumption. We seek to elaborate on a range of aspects of the dynamics inhering in music, labor, and value, from the meaning and nature of musical practice to the transformations linking aesthetic, economic, moral, and linguistic modes of value. We are also interested in pieces that work with sound beyond music proper. Papers should be approximately 7000 words. Subjects might include but are not limited to -musicians' unions and other collectives  -representations of musical labor in literature, film, television, visual arts -music and symbolic capital -music as queer labor -piracy  -religion and music -sound and urban space  -sounds of work -changing technology and its relation to changing forms of labor  -digital and analogue, live and electronic modes of labor -work and pay  -amateur practice -scales of value, including local production and global circulation Send abstracts to Jesse Shipley (jshipley@haverford.edu) or Marina Peterson (marina.peterson@gmail.com) by January 13th, 2012.

Chamada para Artigos

Recebemos artigos originais, ensaios, resenhas, traduções e entrevistas nas áreas de Antropologia e Filosofia durante todo o ano. O volume 1, n.2 está previsto para Maio. Chequem o primeiro número: http://conexoesparciais.com.br/?p=20 Os artigos devem ser enviados para:

conexoesparciais@gmail.com ______________________________

Archaeology and Cultural Mixing: Creolization, Hybridity, and Mestizaje

Volume 28.1, April 2013

Theme editor: Paul van Pelt (wpv20@cam.ac.uk)

In the past decade archaeologists have increasingly embraced a number of concepts involving

cultural mixture and exchange developed in the humanities and social sciences as a means to

describe cultural process in colonial situations and their postcolonial reactions. Closely related

to and often following colonial encounters, the concepts of creolization, hybridity, and mestizaje

(although originally purely biological or linguistic terms) are used to describe discursive

processes in which different social and economic relations are continually negotiated and

renegotiated, and through which entirely “new” or “mixed” social and material conditions are

developed.

Notwithstanding their current archaeological popularity, discussions of the terms creolization,

hybridity and mestizaje have provoked heated debates in corollary fields and highlighted several

of the concepts’ discontents, their primary conceptual drawback allegedly being that of

reifying natural cultures (i.e. cultural essentialism) and denying or overlooking the dynamic role

of human actors in cultural encounters. In addition, very few contributions have hitherto

explicitly tried to problematize creolization, hybridity and mestizaje theory within archaeology,

touching upon such related conceptual issues as typology, mobility, the circulation of material

culture, and the relationship between objects and meaning.

Bearing these issues in mind, the Archaeological Review from Cambridge invites contributions

to the theme of cultural mixing and exchange in archaeology and the concomitant concepts of

creolization, hybridity, and mestizaje. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

Theoretical and historiographical discussions on creolization, hybridity, and

mestizaje theory in archaeology, e.g. how should the terms be defined and are there

further subdivisions to be made (e.g. between hybridity and hybridization theory)?

What do the socio-political contexts in which these concepts emerged and/or gained

archaeological popularity tell us about them? Is it possible to apply creolization,

hybridity, and mestizaje theory outside of the colonial and post-colonial contexts in

which they were developed? If so, how should they be applied and under what

conditions?

Discussions on whether archaeologists can gain novel insights from creolization,

hybridity and mestizaje theory.

Conversely, discussions on whether archaeology with its unique time-depth can add

meaningfully to theories of cultural mixture in the social sciences.

Discussions on the social processes that bring about “hybrid” objects and actions,

such as the exchange of craftsmen and technology, intercultural marriage, and the

circulation of material culture.

Discussions on the relationship between cultural mixtures observed in daily

practices, texts, and language and those traceable in the archaeological record.

Archaeological case-studies that illustrate recombinations of cultural forms,

particularly from those areas and periods where the combined artefactual,

architectural, textual and representational records provide a contextualized and

sophisticated framework for interpretation.

Please send abstracts of not more than 500 words to Paul van Pelt (wpv20@cam.ac.uk) by 29th

February 2012. The full article should not exceed 4000 words. Deadline for first drafts will be in

early June 2012, for publication in April 2013. Style guidelines and notes for contributors can be

found at http://www.societies.cam.ac.uk/arc/contribute.html.

The Archaeological Review from Cambridge is a journal of archaeology managed and published

on a voluntary basis by postgraduate research students at the University of Cambridge. Issues are

released twice a year. ARC is a non-profit making organisation. Although primarily rooted in

archaeological theory and practice, ARC increasingly accommodates a wide range of

perspectives with the aim of establishing a strong, inter-disciplinary journal which will be of

interest to those engaged in a range of fields.

Steven Feld's Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: A Memoir of Five Musical Years in Ghana will be available in February 2012 according to Duke University Press, and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com. Accompanying DVD trilogy and CDs (published by www.voxlox.net and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings).

"In October 2004 I made a brief trip to Accra, Ghana, and while there was introduced to a musician and sculptor who immediately asked me where I was from. I told him, “Philadelphia.” Without missing a beat he responded: “Wow! The city of John Coltrane! The man who saved my life!” I was shocked, as I had been quite literally saying the same thing about the great jazz saxophonist for almost 40 years.

In the six years since that fateful encounter with Nii Noi Nortey, I have lived in Accra 4–6 months each year, working variously as a jazz performer, filmmaker, CD producer, and anthropologist, trying to understand what music in a West African modernity says about jazz cosmopolitanism as diasporic intimacy, and, reflexively, what theories of vernacular cosmopolitanism might reveal about African jazz histories—histories remote to the familiar PBS/Ken Burns/Wynton Marsalis American nationalist jazz master narrative. My encounters have led to performance tours with Ghanaian jazz musicians in Ghana, Europe, and the U.S. (including residencies at UNM), as well as ten CDs and three hour-long films about multiply entangled histories, such as connections between jazz masters Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, and Accra’s avant-gardes, or how New Orleans jazz funerals are echoed in Accra’s car horn funerals."

Steven Feld, "Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra," University of Mexico Newsletter, Winter 2010.