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Peace, Conflict and Security in times of existential crises. Critical, interdisciplinary, and public engangements.

International Conference co-organized by the Collaborative Research Center Transregional 138 “Dynamics of Security” and the Anthropology of Peace, Conflict, and Security (APeCS) network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)

Veranstaltungsdaten

Conference theme

We seem to be living in a time of crises that overlap and exacerbate each other, steering the world toward the brink of destruction. Multiplying armed conflicts, the consequences of climate change and fears of nuclear destruction, the rise of far-right ideologies and governments, economic turmoil, all these are vividly debated and give rise to a broadly shared sense that ours is an age of existential crisis. But contemporary situations of turmoil have long been on the make, and existential crises have been ongoing in many regions of the world. Thus, there is a historicity to current developments that is easy to overlook, and there are experiential registers that do not always find their way into dominant depictions of existential crisis.

The aim of our conference is threefold.

First, we aim at deconstructing dominant narratives of existential crisis by showing the historicity of today’s crises and their perceptions, and the ways in which multiple overlapping and sometimes contradictory processes have led to the current state of turmoil in the world. What do historically informed accounts of today’s environmental, social, political, and economic destruction tell us about the structural conditions that have led to crisis in different contexts, as well as about various forms of agency that have emerged as influential in the process? What does a comparison of articulations of crisis from the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’ reveal about how processes and perceptions of turmoil differ in different contexts? Which theoretical frameworks allow best for maximally inclusive epistemologies, crucially including decolonial perspectives, that afford a complex and nuanced understanding of the current world in turmoil? How do different dimensions such as the law, authority and power, and knowledge articulate in processes that both shape and name crises as such?

Second, we aim at strengthening interdisciplinary understandings of existential crisis that are grounded in solid empirical and historical examinations. How can different disciplines enrich each other’s conceptual apparatuses, methodological toolboxes, and theoretical articulations through a collective exchange that highlights potentialities for interdisciplinary collaboration? What can emerge from the combination of anthropology’s attentive eye to lived experiences and methodological preference for long-term ethnographic engagement with the conceptual malleability of critical security studies, the interdisciplinary richness of peace and conflict studies, and the historicization of perceptions of and responses to existential crises?

Third, we aim at enhancing the academy’s possibilities of engaging critically with the broader public regarding the articulation of responses to burning issues that occupy the public space of debate in our times of crises. What can empirically informed examples of collective action in the face of multiple crises tell us about other ways of being in the world that could offer (at least partial) responses to the pauperization, segregation, exclusion, and extermination of large swathes of the world’s population? What enables and shapes different collective responses to the contemporary crises, from nationalist and nativist movements seeking redefinitions of collectivity to environmental movements such as Extinction Rebellion, from mutual aid groups to communities of preppers, from peace activism to militarizing groups of civilians seeking the protection of particular territories?

The conference programme can be found here

Call for Papers

We invite scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds such as (but not limited to) anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, historians, or geographers to refer to the panel announcements below and submit paper proposals to the panel organizers by October 2, 2023.

For more information click here.