The Politics of Inequality and Difference: Critical Approaches in Anthropology and Sociology June 11, 2009

The main purpose of the present graduate conference is to initiate a critical discussion of the ways in which the acute problems of inequality and difference are currently theorized and methodologically engaged both inter-disciplinarily, in the fields of sociology and anthropology, and extra-disciplinarily, in relation to policy and decision-making. The scope of the conference is thus wide-ranging inviting theoretically informed, methodologically reflexive and politically aware contributions that engage one or both of these major topics.

Given the broad research interests of both faculty and students special attention will be devoted to a number of topics clustered in the following four panels:

• Ethnicization of poverty

The aim of this panel is to bring sociological and anthropological perspectives on the poverty/ethnicity nexus together by asking how cultural differentiation and ethnic competition are linked to class dynamics and the rise of social inequalities. Our questions derive from an understanding of the ethnicization of poverty primarily as a political project (involving a range of actors, social scientists included) aimed at producing a new social theodicy, that is entrenching a normative answer to one of modernity’s most pertinent and structurally under (though not un-) determined questions: ‘who is poor and why’?

• Nationalism and its others

Focusing on the appropriation and use of nationalism by various social groups this panel invites reflection on its historical transformation from a joint anthropological and sociological perspective. Acknowledging nationalism’s complex historical development and contemporary manifestations we wish to inquire about its past and present political, social and cultural deployment. Aware of the relations of power in which the national emerges and gains potency we wish to initiate a discussion of nationalism and its others.

• The politics of space and the ‘right to the city’

In this panel we invite papers that take up the challenge posed by the exhaustion of the imagination of what the city as a body politic entails against the backdrop of a general decline in urban collective action. We want to move beyond an understanding of the city as a tabula rasa to be designed and reorganized according to hegemonic functional or aesthetic criteria, and call for a complex cultural, political and economic understanding of urban space and place with an increased sensitivity to history. We wish to inquire the links between space, the securing of rights, and class formation and to pose the simple questions: “Whose cities?” and “Whose rights?”

• Governance of inequality

Processes of spatial rescaling, decentralization, the emergence of new non-governmental political actors, the rise of transnational networks and supranational political and economic forces have all redrawn the boundaries of the state. Traditional measures to tackle inequalities are becoming increasingly difficult to enact. Although admitting its changing shape, many maintain that the role of the state in governing inequalities remains central. The aim of the panel is to bring together sociological and anthropological studies on the changing nature of the governance of inequalities.

Conference information provided by konferenciakalauz.hu

Official Website: http://web.ceu.hu/soc_ant/docs/Call_for_Papers_CEU_Grad_Conf.pdf