‘An Anthropology for Troubled Times: Redressing critical anthropology’
Conference in memory of Prof. Paul Clough
University of Malta Valletta Campus
14-15 November 2019
14-15 November 2019
‘May you live in interesting times’ was reputedly an ancient Chinese curse made famous in the late 1930s by British MP Sir Austen Chamberlain. A few years before Bronislaw Malinowski died Chamberlain referenced the supposed curse when faced with the growing threat of Nazi Germany. The premise is that ‘interesting times’ are times of upheaval, conflict and insecurity- troubled times. In the post-war period the ‘curse’ was again popularized by Robert Kennedy who in a speech in Cape Town in June 1966 noted that ‘we are living in times of danger and uncertainty’. While we no longer live in the shadow of World War or a Cold War interestingly enough the ‘curse’ was chosen as the theme for the 58th Venice Biennale of 2019. Discussing the premise behind the choice of theme for the curator Ralph Rugoff writes how it sounds ‘uncannily familiar today as the news cycle spins from crisis to crisis’. With the rise of right-wing nationalism from Brazil to Rome, the growing numbers of displaced populations across the globe, the alarming rate of environmental degradation and climate change, the spread of religious violence and intolerance and the overall rise in the politics of fear and hate we are facing challenges not only as ‘social-beings’ but challenges to our very ‘species-being’.
What role does anthropology play within the context of these troubled times? Anthropology has a long history of -at times tortuous- self-reflection. The premise of this conference is that these troubled times pose a new challenge for anthropology. Critical Anthropology for a long time remained locked in the debate between political economy and postmodernism. What can a ‘critical anthropology’ contribute to these challenges? These challenges are at once methodological but also ultimately a matter of values. Values not in the sense of ‘moral goods’ whose traffic and exchange have long simulated an ethical discourse. But rather ‘values’ in terms of the epistemologies by which we, as anthropologists, orient ourselves in relation to the praxis that forms us. Such means of evaluation are not divorced form the historical and material conditions which produce them but are developed in a direct relationship to them. How do we as anthropologists ‘inhabit’ our time- a time which as Fabian once noted we share with that of our informants? Is the concept of ‘critique’ a sufficient enough standard by which to evaluate our contributions to our times?
Contributors to this conference are asked to address the theme of the conference either by looking at the way anthropology can contribute to the re-evaluation of one or more crises of our time (environmental, political-economic, moral-religious) or to re-evaluate the praxis of an anthropology ‘post-critique’. Such papers can either be built upon individual case studies or adopt a broader theoretical approach.
Conference and keynote address will be held on 14 November to be followed by more personal tributes to Prof. Clough on the 15 November 2019.
For queries write to jean-paul.baldacchino@um.edu.mt
This conference is dedicated to the memory of Paul Clough (1948-2019). Prof. Clough joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Malta in 1992 and headed the department for over a decade. His work -and his life- was devoted to his anthropological work. This work however was not limited to the community of scholars. Paul’s work was his life, a life committed to the betterment of the world around him. Employing the tools of his anthropological training Paul developed a lifetime of research addressing issues of political economy in Nigeria, inequality, morality and over the last years immigration and tolerance. It is in his spirit -an anthropologist for our times- that we would like to host this conference at the University of Malta.
Programme
08:30 - 08:35
Welcome Jean Paul Baldacchino
Crisis State of Mind: Vernaculars of Permanence in the Timespace of Greek Austerity
09:50 - 10:00
Coffee Break Level 1 Valletta Campus
10.00 - 11.15
Panel 2: Models or morality and ethics in Anthropology
11:25 - 12:15
Panel 3: Debating the anthropology of African Political economy
12:15 - 13:45
Lunch Break: No lunch is provided however feel free to roam the many neighboring eateries and cafeterias
13:45 - 15:25
Panel 4: Anthropology and the immigration in the Mediterranean
15:25 - 15:40
Coffee Break Level 1 Valletta Campus
15:40 - 16:55
Panel 5: Teaching anthropology-practicing anthropology
Programme
08:30 - 08:35
Welcome Jean Paul Baldacchino
08:35 - 09:50
Panel 1: Austerity, Corruption and Revolution: Discourses of the state in the Mediterranean
Panel 1: Austerity, Corruption and Revolution: Discourses of the state in the Mediterranean
Chair: John Gledhill
Crisis State of Mind: Vernaculars of Permanence in the Timespace of Greek Austerity
Daniel Knight (University of St Andrews)
Modern Libya and Revolution
Ranier Fsadni (University of Malta)
'Conspiracy within reason', 'Corruption within limits'?
Paul Sant Cassia (University of Malta)
09:50 - 10:00
Coffee Break Level 1 Valletta Campus
10.00 - 11.15
Panel 2: Models or morality and ethics in Anthropology
Chair: David Zammit
Believing in Morality: religion, reflexivity and moral dilemmas
Jon P Mitchell (University of Sussex)
The Moral economy is not what you think: Paul Clough’s remarkable theory
David Napier (University College London)
Midnight in the field of Good and Evil: From the Ethics of Anthropology to the ethical turn in Anthropology
Jean Paul Baldacchino (University of Malta)
11:25 - 12:15
Panel 3: Debating the anthropology of African Political economy
Chair: Paul Sant Cassia
Towards a Political Economy of Environmental Crisis and Social Inequality in Desiccating Environments of Northern Nigeria and West Africa (1970-2018)
Caroline Ifeka (Australian National University)
Wines at the Cape: Liquor and Labour, 1655-2005
Gavin Williams (University of Stellenbosch) (Oxford University)
12:15 - 13:45
Lunch Break: No lunch is provided however feel free to roam the many neighboring eateries and cafeterias
13:45 - 15:25
Panel 4: Anthropology and the immigration in the Mediterranean
Chair: Ranier Fsadni
Informality, Surveillance and the neoliberal (B)order: Insights from the Hot Spot Lesbos
Jutta Lauth Bacas Research Affiliate, Mediterranean Institute (University of Malta)
Plastic hospitality, humanitarianism and migration: a challenge for anthropologists
Daniela DeBono (University of Mälmo)
Employing Anthropology: Lessons from the the asylum and reception system.
Barbara Sorgoni (University of Turin)
The Social Production of Migrant Homelessness in Malta
David E. Zammit (University of Malta)
15:25 - 15:40
Coffee Break Level 1 Valletta Campus
15:40 - 16:55
Panel 5: Teaching anthropology-practicing anthropology
Chair: Rachel Radmilli
Anthropological Fieldwork , including Paul Clough as case study.
Professor Judith Okely (Affiliate, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford University).
Doing Anthropology in troubled times.
Alex Strating (University of Amsterdam)
Social thinking from the start: housing, policy, method
Rachael M Scicluna (Parliamentary Secretariat for Social Accommodation) (University of Malta)