The ASN Conference “Security and Morality: Critical Anthropological Perspectives” was held onMarch 28 – 29, 2019, at the University of Oslo.
The conference provided a productive platform to explore security through a focus on morality and to share and exchange on research-projects at different stages. Participants greatly welcomed the conference topic and opportunity to analyse the security-morality nexus in their respective fields of research on counter-terrorism, humanitarianism, biker-clubs, migration control, policing, ‘community’ cohesion, victim-support programs and more (see program). The topic also opened a space for reflections about the ethical challenges in doing research in a politically and morally highly charged field.
Geographically, the case studies presented at the conference explored security-morality configurations in different EU countries, as well as in the US, Russia, Mexico, the Middle-East and in the South Pacific. The conference brought together around thirty colleagues from across the disciplines of anthropology, political science, social work, law and criminology. On the first evening, Katja Franko Aas’ keynote lecture addressed the moral economy of migration control. The conference concluded with two book-launches: “Security Blurs: The Politics of Plural Security Provision”, presented by Tessa Diphoorn and Erella Grassiani and “How Outlaws Win Friends and Influence People”, by Tereza Kuldova.
For the realisation of the conference we are thankful for the funding support received from the European Association of Social Anthropologist (EASA), the Ludwigs-Maximilians Universitaet Muenchen (LMU), and the hosting institution University of Oslo (UiO).
A special thanks to all the participants and to Tereza Kuldova for hosting the ASN conference.