Vortrag

Fri­day Sem­i­nar sched­ule for the Spring Term. The week­ly research sem­i­nar on
anthro­po­log­i­cal the­o­ry has been the venue for cut­ting-edge, intensive
debate on cur­rent research in the dis­ci­pline since
Malinowski’s time at the LSE.

These sem­i­nars are open to the pub­lic on a first come, first served basis.

Fri­day, 11am – 1pm
Old Anthro­pol­o­gy Library, LSE Old Build­ing, Houghton Street
https://www.lse.ac.uk/anthropology/events

Spring Term Sched­ule 2025
9 May 2025
Dis­lo­ca­tions of Kin­ship, Times of Care: “Forced-Mar­riage” in the UK
Per­veez Mody, Cam­bridge University

16 May 2025
Do We Not Expire? On Cold-chain Logis­tics and the Bio-gov­er­nance of Life in
Post-social­ist China
Orlan­do Zhu, LSE

30 May 2025
Hori­zons of Touch
Ser­e­na Dankwa, Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel

6 June 2025
Mon­ey, Mon­ey, Mon­ey: Otryg­ghet (inse­cu­ri­ty) and Oppor­tu­ni­ty in a Swedish Suburb
Ruben Ander­s­son, Oxford University

13 June 2025
‘A Bla­tant Betray­al’? Dis­sect­ing British Nar­ra­tives of ‘Islamo-Left­ism’
and Queerness
Jonathan Gal­ton, UCL

20 June 2025
Step­ping into the Same Riv­er Twice: Demen­tia Care as Imag­i­na­tive Work in Southern
China
Fred Lai, LSE

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Dis­abil­i­ty & Cli­mate: In Con­ver­sa­tion with Raven Cretney
10th July 2025

In Sep­tem­ber 2023, we launched an online ‘Dis­abil­i­ty & Cli­mate: In con­ver­sa­tion with…’ series for peo­ple that are inter­est­ed in reflect­ing on and/or shar­ing expe­ri­ences around dis­abil­i­ty and the cli­mate cri­sis. This is part of the Sens­ing Cli­mate project, led by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter. You can read more about the project and tune into past events online: https://sensing-climate.com/events

We’re delight­ed to be joined on Thurs­day 10th July, 8.30–10am BST (7.30–9pm in New Zealand) by Raven Cret­ney, Senior Lec­tur­er at Lin­coln Uni­ver­si­ty, Aotearoa New Zealand. Raven’s research focus­es on col­lec­tive action and pol­i­cy change relat­ing to post-dis­as­ter and envi­ron­men­tal issues. Her work spans sev­er­al top­ics, includ­ing man­aged retreat and cli­mate adap­ta­tion, the role of com­mu­ni­ty scale action and lead­er­ship in catalysing envi­ron­men­tal change, and the evo­lu­tion of activism and social move­ments. In our ses­sion, Raven will dis­cuss oppor­tu­ni­ties for dis­abil­i­ty-led cli­mate adap­ta­tion, the pos­si­bil­i­ties for learn­ing from past events and the need for care­ful nav­i­ga­tion of cri­sis pol­i­tics in build­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty across and with­in com­mu­ni­ties. Read more about the ses­sion online: https://sensing-climate.com/events/raven-cretney Access the sign up form online: https://forms.office.com/e/fVr6ESpM4h

If the sign-up forms are not acces­si­ble to you, please do email (Sarah.Bell@exeter.ac.uk) to share your inter­ests in join­ing instead. We will then send round a Zoom sign-in link about a week before each event.

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CfP for a pan­el on “Shift­ing states and their his­to­ries in insti­tu­tion­al care”
Anthrostate con­fer­ence “Shift­ing States”
22–24 Octo­ber, 2025
Ams­ter­dam, Netherlands 

✨No reg­is­tra­tion fee, in-per­son only. (EASA net­work on Anthro­polo­gies of the State conference)

If the pan­el abstract below res­onates with your research and you would like to join a bunch of friend­ly peo­ple, please send your abstract to Kris­tine Krause k.krause@uva.nl

The final pan­el includ­ing abstracts need to be sub­mit­ted 11 April, so we would like have your abstract the lat­est 9th April.

Junior and PhD researchers par­tic­u­lar­ly welcome.

Look­ing for­ward to hear­ing from you!

Shift­ing states and their his­to­ries in insti­tu­tion­al care

The anthro­pol­o­gy of the state has long argued that states do not exist as coher­ent units out there but are artic­u­lat­ed in prac­tices, spaces and effects. One of the key spaces in which states have effects on their cit­i­zens are care insti­tu­tions. They respond to cru­cial needs of humans; for instance as places where sick­ness­es are treat­ed and frail bod­ies are tak­en care of. They can also curate major tran­si­tions such as birth and death. Care insti­tu­tions such as hos­pi­tals or nurs­ing homes are places defined by par­tic­u­lar and per­sis­tent forms of inter­ac­tion. These forms – where and how things are done, when and by whom – have often coag­u­lat­ed over time. They are backed up by legit­i­ma­tions which are not easy to ques­tion, because they are part of oth­er non-tan­gi­ble soci­etal insti­tu­tions, such as gen­dered divi­sion of labour, kin­ship and fam­i­ly ide­olo­gies which are spe­cif­ic to his­tor­i­cal­ly grown care and health regimes. These regimes as part of state gov­er­nance can bear traces of pasts such as colo­nial rule, polit­i­cal regimes shifts or spe­cif­ic biopo­lit­i­cal projects of care and con­trol. Insti­tu­tion­al care can also be pro­vid­ed by non-state actors on behalf of the state includ­ing non-prof­it, reli­gious or char­i­ty organ­i­sa­tions but also com­mer­cial or even cor­po­ra­tized actors. The rea­sons why these actors per­form or have tak­en over these tasks, have again their own his­to­ries often relat­ed to shifts in ways of gov­er­nance of wel­fare state regimes.

This pan­el brings togeth­er papers that explore how shift­ing states and their his­to­ries come back resur­face, or take unex­pect­ed forms with­in the spaces and prac­tices of insti­tu­tion­al care. The papers exam­ine how his­tor­i­cal lega­cies shape and haunt care­giv­ing inter­ac­tions, insti­tu­tion­al rou­tines, and the nar­ra­tives and posi­tion­al­i­ties of those involved in these care set­tings. In ask­ing how these pasts are artic­u­lat­ed, linger on or are rep­re­sent­ed in care insti­tu­tions this pan­el under­stands his­to­ry not as some­thing wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered in the back­ground, but as active­ly brought up, mobi­lized and pre­sent­ed in the field or artic­u­lat­ed by the ethno­g­ra­ph­er. The past then becomes “his­to­ry” through prac­tices of actors in the field or through the ana­lyt­i­cal work of the ethno­g­ra­ph­er who iden­ti­fies his­to­ry as an absent pres­ence in the stud­ied sit­u­a­tion or prac­tice. The paper in this pan­el inter­ro­gate the con­sti­tu­tive moments where his­to­ry appears, or is brought up in insti­tu­tion­al care set­tings, ask­ing, which posi­tion­ings, gen­er­a­tional mem­o­ries and nar­ra­tives become artic­u­lat­ed therein.

Orga­nized by the Relo­Care Team & friends from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Amsterdam
(Mar­iusz Sapieha, Matouš Jelínek, Veroni­ka Priel­er, Sha­hana Sid­diqui , Yuan Yan and Kris­tine Krause)

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