Conference Theme
Radical changes in the economic and political aspects of human life-worlds characterize the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although the economy has always been at the heart of social life, both national and local economies have taken on an increasingly monetary character, transforming the social fabric and leading to a widespread economization of cultural practice. Neoliberal claims about the receding state notwithstanding, it is increasingly apparent that these transformations have depended on a growth and consolidation of state power, particularly as exerted around the object of ‘economy’ and the practices of ‘economic development’. Growth of state influence has occurred through the emerging framework of international institutions, through the ‘outsourcing’ of state functions, and through the increasing incursion of state policies and programs into daily life and subjective experience.
At the same time, it is clear that many places remain either at the periphery or beyond the ambit of the state, whilst new spaces of ‘exception’ have also emerged as part of contemporary changes in state organization and economic practice. Similarly, various forms of ‘customary’ economic practice and political organization persist, even in the face of current transformations. At least some of these practices offer forms of local resistance to or transformation of what are often presumed to be monolithic or homogeneous forms of global capitalism or governance.
This conference aims to provide a forum for contemporary anthropological engagements with ‘the economic’ and ‘the state’, ‘government’ and ‘the political’ more generally. The conference seeks to foreground the role of the economy in relation to the late-modern social transformations. In addition to plenary panels on The economic in contemporary anthropology, and The subject of the state, we call for panels and papers dealing with various aspects of economic and political anthropology across a range of global settings. In addition to ‘themed’ papers and panels, the organizers also welcome contributions reflecting the wider interests of Australian anthropology.