Precarity is one of the main priorities of the EASA Executive Board, in line with previous activities undertaken by past members of the Executive. Within this context, about 70 scholars met at the University of Bern last November, to attend the EASA AGM seminar entitled On Politics and Precarities: Anthropological Perspectives. The seminar was organized by EASA in collaboration with the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, PrecAnthro group and the Swiss Anthropological Association. One of the objectives of the seminar was to bring together debates on different strands of precarity, analyze sites of disempowerment at the intersection of precarity and politics and discuss potentials of collaboration, solidarity and unionization. In four workshops (one organized by the BernAnthroCollective) participants from different national contexts and geographic areas discussed how the interplay of political constraints and the unpredictability of life trajectories shape, shift and discipline academic pathways, in particular under authoritarian regimes and austerity policies.
This two-day meeting provided relevant comparative insights to issues of exclusion, uncertainties as normalcy as well as to shared responsibilities. The presentations introduced theoretically grounded case studies of precarious contexts, auto-ethnographic witnesses of precarious “episodes” and featured a report from the World Council of Anthropological Associations (WCAA) and a brief introduction to Scholars at Risk network.
In addition, representatives of the PrecAnthroGroup, (which came into being during EASA2016 in Milan as a result of the open meeting on precarious research) introduced the precarity survey whose scope is that of learning more about the employment profile of EASA members. Several questions were raised and discussed with the participants in order to improve the content of the survey starting from the results of the pilot survey realized among the workshop participants. The survey will be officially launched among EASA members in late spring and it has three main goals:
- to gain an overview of employment conditions among the association’s members and nature of their work contracts,
- to explore the experiences of the members with labour conditions within and outside academia, and
- to gain an overview over employment pathways.
EASA members are warmly encouraged to respond to the survey considering the importance of the precarious existence of (young) researchers.
A powerful keynote reflecting on the Production of ‘Dangerous Knowledge’, Violation of Academic Freedom and Precarious Solidarities in the Age of Authoritarianism was given by Ozlem Biner (LSE). The keynote pursued to reveal the conditions and trajectories that are constitutive of precarities and solidarities in the academic context of Turkey and the UK and gave space to an ample debate between the participants.
The seminar has impact on various levels: the results of this seminar contributed to a policy paper for upcoming discussion and political interventions that is presently drafted by the EASA PrecAnthro liaison officers in order to address it to the European Commission DG Research and DG Employment. Another result of the seminar is the possibility of publishing a special issue of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale Journal on the topic of precarity that includes research articles, a Debate and a Forum section that will feature as many voices of precarious and non-precarious scholars as possible. Finally yet importantly, for those EASA members interested to deepen their knowledge on the results of this EASA AGM precarity seminar, we recommend reading the articles published on AllegraLab website. Here you have some of the titles: How to write about precarity from a precarious position (Annika Lems), Academia in Dark Times of Austerity Politics and Authoritarianism (David Loher, Georgeta Stoica, Sabine Strasser), The uncanny predictability of precarious existence (Katja Seidel), Precarity Everywhere? (Corinne Schwaller).
Georgeta Stoica and Sabine Strasser