NET held a panel at the EASA conference in Milan 2016 on the theme of TACTICS AS ETHNOGRAPHIC AND CONCEPTUAL OBJECTS. The panel was convened by Theodoros Kyriakides and Patrick Laviolette.
SHORT ABSTRACT
This panel explores tactics of alliance, relationality and visibility/invisibility through collective or individual perspectives. Contributions should consider the notion of tactics in conversation with anthropology’s conceptual wealth – both classic themes and more recent theoretical developments.
LONG ABSTRACT
The global rise of social movements and grassroots communities suggests there is fertile ground in both ethnographically as well as theoretically examining the tactics by which such collectives gain political leverage and situate themselves in the becoming of their issues. This panel shall follow Roy Wagner’s ‘Coyote Anthropology’ (Nebraska, 2010) in further engaging in the exploration of a subjectivity which is “aware of itself”: Such an ethnographic and theoretical examination of tactics can illuminate the practices by which individuals understand, navigate, orientate and actively construct and re-create their subjectivities in the world. Traditionally associated with cunningness and deceit, a contemporary perspective can potentially reclaim the notion of tactics in the name of political connection and the urgency of alliance. At the same time, such a perspective might unveil that tactical thinking is not always looking for connection, but also disconnection from previous relations and associations. The panel invites contributions exploring tactics of alliance, relationality, visibility and invisibility on a collective and individual level. We especially welcome contributions which put the notion of tactics in conversation with anthropology’s conceptual wealth — classic concepts of witchcraft, the trickster, taboo, hospitality, bricolage, mana and gifting, as well as with more recent theoretical developments such as ontology, multi-species/post-human anthropology and the Anthropocene. We encourage submissions from various field sites and theoretical perspectives. This includes but is not restricted to tactical explorations of ethics, value, kinship, medical anthropology and STS.
PRESENTATIONS
Provocation: tactics as ethnographic and conceptual objects Theodoros Kyriakides (University of Cyprus)Patrick Laviolette (FF, MUNI, Masaryk Univ.)
The reciprocity of perspectives Roy Wagner (University of Virginia)
Tactic equivocations: reflections on the politics of intercultural encounters Francesca Mezzenzana (LMU)
“You need to know the rules of the game: we know this game” Barbara Götsch (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
From cocoa to oil palm: visibility strategy and development among the Baining Inna Yaneva-Toraman (Heriot-Watt University)
Looking for leaders: tactics and agency in the 2015 South African student protests Vito Laterza (University of Agder)Ayanda Manqoyi (University of Cape Town)
“More than just tomatoes”: tactical representations and passionate interests in Chicago’s 61 St Community Garden Lindsay Harris (University of British Columbia)
Anthropologically blonde at the UN: methodological reflections of a conspicuous ethnographer Miia Halme-Tuomisaari (Lund University)
Strategy and tactics in applied legal anthropology: redefining the “strategic essentialism” debate Jonas Bens (Universität Hamburg)
Tactics as the invention of new possibilities of life: the experiences of young women care-leavers in Brazil Fernanda Rifiotis (IRIS – L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales/ Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina-UFSC)
Protection petitions as legal fiction: creating validity for choice marriages in North India Rama Srinivasan