Newsletter 2019 (2)

by Thomas Hoppenheit on September 20, 2019

Find the Newsletter as a PDF here.

Dear Network Members,

The call for panels for the 2020 EASA conference in Lisbon is now open. We invite you to submit panel proposals under the Anthropology of Security Network. Please feel free to use the network email list to exchange upon proposals or to find colleagues interested in convening a panel together. The Call for panel closes on 21st of October. https://www.easaonline.org/conferences/easa2020/

To draw other security scholar’s attention to your panel and to increase the network’s visibility, we encourage you to propose your panel under the ASN banner by adding “[ASN]” in your panel submission. Please inform us (anthro-security@protonmail.com) beforehand about the security-related panels you’re planning to submit.

Other updates

IUAES conference

From 27 to 31 August 2019, the IUAES Inter-Congress “World Solidarities” took place in Poznan/Poland. Several security-related panels took place. Network member Ana Ivasiuc (Giessen) convened a panel on “Solidarity in Times of (In)Security”, with Alexandra Schwell (Munich) as discussant.  

https://indico.conference4me.psnc.pl/event/230/session/100/contribution/985

The IUAES 2019 Inter-Congress was a huge success, particularly with regard to the congress’s potential political impact. In September 2018, the Polish government decided to erase cultural/social anthropology and ethnology. Cultural/social anthropology and ethnology were removed from the list of academic disciplines. Scholars and academics have been protesting since, and they hope that the organization and success of the IUAES Inter-Congress help to show that anthropology and ethnology are in fact internationally renowned academic disciplines. If you wish to know more about the Polish situation, see http://sae.americananthro.org/2018/12/erasing-polish-anthropology-by-elzbieta-m-gozdziak-and-izabella-main/ ; https://www.etnologia.uw.edu.pl/en

AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting in Vancouver, 20-24 November 2019.

For those presenting a paper or convening a panel at the AAA/CASCA Meeting, please feel free to invite us and circulate information via the network’s mailing list.

Publications

De Goede, Marieke, Esmé Bosma and Polly Pallister-Wilkins (2019): Secrecy and Methods in Security Research: A Guido to Qualitative Fieldwork. London; New York: Routledge. https://www.crcpress.com/Secrecy-and-Methods-in-Security-Research-A-Guide-to-Qualitative-Fieldwork/Goede-Bosma-Pallister-Wilkins/p/book/9780367027247

This collection includes several chapters by ASN members

Summary: This book analyses the challenges of secrecy in security research, and develops a set of methods to navigate, encircle and work with secrecy.

How can researchers navigate secrecy in their fieldwork, when they encounter confidential material, closed-off quarters or bureaucratic rebuffs? This is a particular challenge for researchers in the security field, which is by nature secretive and difficult to access. This book creatively assesses and analyses the ways in which secrecies operate in security research. The collection sets out new understandings of secrecy, and shows how secrecy itself can be made productive to research analysis. It offers students, PhD researchers and senior scholars a rich toolkit of methods and best-practice examples for ethically appropriate ways of navigating secrecy. It pays attention to the balance between confidentiality, and academic freedom and integrity. The chapters draw on the rich qualitative fieldwork experiences of the contributors, who did research at a diversity of sites, for example at a former atomic weapons research facility, inside deportation units, in conflict zones, in everyday security landscapes, in virtual spaces and at borders, bureaucracies and banks.

The book will be of interest to students of research methods, critical security studies and International Relations in general.

Monika Weissensteiner (2019) “Illustrated Book Review of ‘Bodies as Evidence. Security, Knowledge, and Power (2018), by Maguire, Rao, Zurawski (eds), Duke University Press’” https://www.surveillance-studies.org/2019/04/rezension-bodies-as-evidence/

Emma McCluskey (2019): From Righteousness to Far Right. An Anthropological Rethinking of Critical Security Studies. McGill Queens University

https://www.mqup.ca/from-righteousness-to-far-right-products-9780773556898.php

“From Righteousness to Far Right demonstrates the great value of working at the intersection between anthropology and critical security studies for understanding the securitization of migration. In really engaging with anthropology as a mode of knowledge and knowing, Mc Cluskey makes a major contribution to the turn towards micro-practices and the everyday in security studies and International relations.” Jef Huysmans, Queen Mary University of London

CFPs/new journals

Political Anthropological Research in International Social Sciences (PARISS) is a new journal edited by Didier Bigo, Tugba Basaran, Monique Beerli and Emma McCluskey. https://brill.com/view/journals/pari/pari-overview.xml?lang=en

 Articles for submissions:

– Individually authored or co-authored original research articles (up to 3 authors; approximately 7,000-11,000 words including footnotes) and collectively authored original research articles (3+ authors; 10,000-25,000 words including footnotes)

– Book reviews, interviews, commentaries, and shorter articles focused on research methodologies (all up to 5,000 words).

We thank for the inputs received for this newsletter and invite you to share relevant information, either by directly sending it yourself through the network list, or by sending it to anthro-security@protonmail.com in order for us to collect it for dissemination through the newsletter.

Best regards,

The ASN convenors
Alexandra Schwell, Tereza Kuldova, Monika Weissensteiner

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