Dear EASA members,
The first half of the year has played out with a parade of events which should awaken our critical spirit: the threats of extremism and authoritarianism; religious affiliations and notions of race that have returned to the fray to justify violence and exclusion; and in the background, the migration of men, women, and children who are fleeing war or persecution. All of this seems to surprise less and less. However, it is more and more certain that we cannot remain cloaked in scientific neutrality. As anthropologists, we are called to take a position and play a role, both pedagogical and critical, in terms of engaged citizenship. This is also the spirit of our AGM for this year, which will take place in Bern, November 16-17, and will be the occasion to discuss a number of these themes that today appear crucial. We have decided to begin with the world of research in order to debate the situations of risk and insecurity found both inside and outside of the academy: Politics and Precarity in Academia: Anthropological Perspectives. There is no lack of case studies: from Turkey to Pakistan, passing by Greece, intellectual engagement is suffering attacks from economic politics or authoritarian regimes, resulting in various forms of precarity and situations of risk. Chandana Mathur, chair of the WCAA, of which EASA is a member, will share the results of a survey on “Anthropological fieldwork and risk in a violent world”.
But precarity also assumes more hidden forms. For too long we have become accustomed to the internal relationships of power at the academy that today assume new forms linked to neoliberal logic and politics. These forms of precarity reflect their unsustainability and profound contradiction with the principles that we profess to hold as anthropologists. The PrecAnthro Group, which already launched a debate on these questions at the 2016 conference in Milan, will introduce and discuss during the EASA AGM seminar in Bern a questionnaire concerning precarity in academia that will be lunched among EASA members soon after the Bern seminar.
In 2015, following the EASA AGM organized in Prague, the executive committee wrote Why anthropology matters, a policy paper published on the EASA website in several languages and intended to reinforce the visibility of anthropology and its usefulness in understanding the phenomena that characterize contemporaneity. With the results of these meetings in Bern, which we hope will be productive, we would like to produce a position paper focusing on scholars at risks and precarity in academia, that will be addressed to the European Commission and to other institutional actors. EASA can play an important role as a professional association and also in raising the consciousness of public authorities and the research community about possible solutions.
Mobility and nomadism in the academy, professional mobility, mobility linked to violence and war or climate change: this is only a portion of the themes that will be broached during our next conference that, as you know, will be held in Stockholm in August of 2018. The theme chosen for this edition is Staying, Moving, Settling. Mobility will allow us to look at both the individual and collective dimension of these movements, to study those who remain as well as the networks that emerge during displacements or that are built upon arrivals. Displacements characterize the contemporary world, but neither these displacements nor their tragic aspects are new, nor are the dimension of hope that can accompany them, or the economic and political issues that are at the origin or emerge when individuals and groups displace. Mobility also has more regular and ancient dimensions. We only have to think of the pilgrimages, of migrations for work along the Alpine chain, of the mobility from one country to another in Europe, inside the Mediterranean and beyond: migrations have connected Europe and the rest of the world for centuries. The spatial dimensions, the forms and the contexts in which the displacements take place or are organized, or prevented, will be among the themes that the conference will highlight. The call for panels will be launched in December 2017.
The editorial work, network initiatives, and lobbying at the heart of Europe that the current executive committee is trying to reinforce, and particularly our own participation at the WCAA and IUAES, should help us to combine efforts and experiences to strengthen anthropology and its visibility. We have also renewed our membership inside the EASSH and will participate in the general assembly which will take place at the beginning of November in Brussels, that will focus on the development of the next Framework Program 2021-27. Finally, during the first months of the mandate, the executive committee signed an expression of interest for the LIBRARIA project and confirmed its participation in the principles of the network to facilitate and develop scenarios for open access publishing in the social sciences and humanities, and to explore funding opportunities.
The first letter of this new executive was presented in the two languages (French and English) that are the official languages of the EASA. We renew this practice here in the present letter as a sign of the EASA’s openness vis-à-vis the anthropologists and languages present in Europe.
Yours sincerely,
Valeria Siniscalchi
EASA President