Category: updates and publications

Call for submissions for upcoming conference at Yale

Global Health & Innovation Conference 2012
Presented by Unite For Sight, 9th Annual Conference

Where: Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
When: Saturday, April 21 – Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Global Health & Innovation Conference is the world’s largest global health conference and social entrepreneurship conference. This must-attend, thought-leading conference annually convenes 2,200 leaders, changemakers, students, and professionals from all fields of global health, international development, and social entrepreneurship. Register during August to secure the lowest registration rate.

Interested in presenting at the conference? Submit an abstract for consideration. We are currently accepting abstract submissions for presentation, and the first abstract deadline is August 31.

“Please Don’t Beat Me Sir” gains recognition, needs support

Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!, has been officially selected to have its world premiere at the 2011 Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in October! The Independent listed BIFF (“Asia’s largest film festival”) as one of the top twelve film festivals of 2011.

In order to make the most of this exciting opportunity, the filmmakers need your help to make an exhibition-ready copy of the film to show at Busan. In return, they are offering their supporters the opportunity to watch a special “Sneak Preview” version of the film, either online or as a DVD. Read here to learn how you can be one of the first people to watch the film by making a donation.

Call for participants for upcoming anthropology conference

Conference Dates: October 14-16, 2011
American University, Washington DC

Submission deadline: September 16, 2011 5PM Eastern Time
Contact: AUPublicAnthro@gmail.com
Website: http://american.edu/cas/anthropology/public

(Re)Defining Power: Paradigms of Praxis

The Eighth Annual Public Anthropology Conference

Join us for a conference that examines and uncovers various systems of power. New paradigms of praxis must be about more than making power visible. Our challenge in this conference, then, is to both locate and redefine power. We invite academic and professional anthropologists, social scientists, activists, public health professionals, filmmakers and educators to join us in this inquiry into power. We welcome panels, papers, and skill workshops drawing upon some of the following frameworks for challenging power – critical race studies, interrogations of the nonprofit industrial complex, anti-displacement, critical animal studies, environmental justice, education reform and policy, disability studies, activism-based research, and performance and queer studies – but we invite papers of all types and from all social justice movements.

Continue reading “Call for participants for upcoming anthropology conference” →

2011 Winners of UC Press/Public Anthropology Competition

The University of California Press in association with the Center for a Public Anthropology annually sponsors an international competition that awards a formal, publishing contract for the best book proposal submitted—independent of whether the author has completed (or even started) the proposed manuscript.

This year, there were 282 submissions. They were from every continent (except Antarctica) and a wide range of professions and disciplines. See the winning submissions.

The California Series in Public Anthropology draws professional scholars from a wide range of disciplines to address major public issues. To reinforce this effort, the University of California Press in association with the Center for a Public Anthropology sponsors an international competition that awards a prize of $5,000 plus a formal, publishing contract for the best book proposal submitted.

The deadline for the 2012 competition is March 1, 2012.

PhD scholarship opportunity

Doctoral Scholarship in Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews

The St Andrews Centre for Pacific Studies invites applications from candidates with a doctoral research project in any field of Social Anthropology, with a regional focus on the Pacific. This fee waiver doctoral scholarship will start in September 2011 and cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate (currently £3,732 per annum) for three years.

See website for more details.

Violence in the city: book launch and discussion

NOTE: This event has been canceled.

Understanding and Supporting Community Responses to Urban Violence
When: Thursday, February 10th, 2011 from 12pm-2pm
Where: MC 13-121
The World Bank

Chair:
Sarah Cliff, Director, World Development Report

Presenters:
Alexandre Marc : Cluster Leader, Conflict Crime and Violence Team, Social Development Department (SDV), World Bank
Alys Willman: Social Development Specialist, Conflict Crime and Violence Team, SDV, World Bank

Discussants:
Junaid Ahmad: Sector Manager, Africa – Urban & Water, World Bank
Rodrigo Serrano: Senior Social Development specialist, LAC, World Bank

For millions of people around the world, violence, or the fear of violence, is a daily reality. Much of this violence concentrates in urban centers in the developing world. Cities are now home to half the world’s population and expected to absorb almost all new population growth over the next 25 years. In many cases, the scale of urban violence can eclipse those of open warfare; some of the world’s highest homicide rates occur in countries that have not undergone a war, but that have serious epidemics of violence in urban areas. This study emerged out of a growing recognition that urban communities themselves are an integral part of understanding the causes and impacts of urban violence and of generating sustainable violence prevention initiatives.

Continue reading “Violence in the city: book launch and discussion” →

Anthro connection: for all the gold in Colombia

An article in the Economist reports that the FARC is turning to gold. Literally. Apparently some FARC groups are financing their efforts through illegal gold mining.

The story of digging for gold in Colombia is not a pretty one and it is not a new one.

Cultural anthropologist Michael Taussig has written a powerful book about gold in Colombia, from before Columbus got there to the stunning displays in the Museo del Oro, a living tribute to the beauty of gold.

Read Taussig’s My Cocaine Museum and think about gold, slavery, violence and the pretty little bits of it that we (speaking for myself) attach to ourselves. And the billionaires who trade in gold. And the poor who work for pitiful wages sifting gold from the earth. Beyond gold, Taussig draws connections to cocaine and more.

I love this book: it is deep and dark and bright and memorable from page one to the end. Here is chapter 2 as a teaser.

Photo: Piece of gold from the Museo del Oro; Courtesy of dariorana, Creative Commons license on Flickr

Rethinking development impact: current issue of Development Policy in Practice

Deborah Eade, provides an overview of this special issue in her editorial:

It is particularly pleasing to end our twentieth-anniversary volume with an issue devoted to the theme ‘Rethinking Impact: Understanding the Complexity of Poverty and Change’, compiled by guest editors Nina Lilja, Patti Kristjanson, and Jamie Watts. Their call to legitimize what they describe as the ‘boundary-spanning work’ whereby researchers give first priority to linking the knowledge generation with practical action echoes precisely the aims and objectives of Development in Practice, summarized in our strapline ‘Stimulating Thought for Action’. They argue for a diversity of methods for the production and sharing of knowledge, to enhance capacity, and to evaluate the impact of such efforts. However, as they emphasize, such multidisciplinary and embedded ways of working need ‘to be recognized and rewarded, and sufficient resources dedicated to [them]’.