This week York will play host to the Canadian Anthropology Society’s annual conference, which will welcome anthropology scholars and researchers from around the world.
Themed “Promising Uncertainties: Unsettling the Future of Anthropological Terrain,” the 2014 conference will run from April 30 to May 3 and seeks to draw out a range of questions surrounding ethnography. This year’s conference also marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA).
“This is the largest gathering of CASCA in its history,” says Professor Albert Schrauwers, chair of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies’ Anthropology Department and co-organizer of this year’s conference.
CASCA’s keynote speaker is Didier Fassin, the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, who is well known for his work on public health and the politics of the human body. In his talk, “The Uncertain Promise of Ethnography,” Fassin will discuss ethnography as a defining method for anthropology in spite of its flaws.
The conference will host a wealth of sessions, roundtables and workshops exploring anthropological enquiry, practice and discourse, neo-liberalism and public debate in an era of uncertainty. Special conference events include an anthropology graduate student pub night and networking luncheon, several film panels, a book fair and an ethnographic “experiment” in storytelling.
LA&PS anthropology Professor Penny Van Esterik will launch the book, Trying the Way: Ethnographic Glimpses of York University, with co-author anthropology PhD Candidate Laurie Baker at a reception at the conference on Thursday, May 1 at 7 pm.
For more information about the conference, visit the CASCA 2014 website and follow the conference on Twitter via the hashtag #CASCA2014. The conference program and abstracts are also available on the CASCA website.
The conference is sponsored by the CASCA, York University, the Office of the Dean in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada.