On May 7, a workshop will be held at Leiden University on the search for new directions in anthropology regarding the study of futures.
Time: 13-17hrs
Location: Bestuurskamer (Ground Floor), Pieter de la Court gebouw, Leiden University
Followed by drinks in the Bamboo lounge (3rd floor), Pieter de la Court gebouw, Leiden University
About the workshop theme
"Futurities" or forms of the future have distinct cultural histories and habitats. The division of labor that put "tradition" (or a normative addiction to past templates) in times and places other than modernity, and the future (usually in the shape of "development" or "modernization") in an imaginary Western civilization has itself lost its credibility, but that does not mean it has passed away. Moreover, new self-indulgent classifications of the West by the West have taken its place ("post-modernity"; "reflexive modernization"; "reduction to the present"; "acceleration"; "time-space compression"; and so on). Systematic research into the forms that the future takes after the rise of commodified, "empty" time in the Middle Ages, the "open" future of prognosis and progress in the early modern period, and the epochal consciousness of the period of revolution or Sattelzeit - as theorized by Barbara Adam, Reinhard Koselleck and Jacques LeGoff, among others - is rare. Yet, diagnoses of new forms of the future after modernity abound. This workshop reviews and presents recent research into forms of the future to find out what kind of research is needed to overcome that gap.
The workshop consists of four presentations from two, NWO funded, Leiden research projects: the "The Future is Elsewhere" project led by Peter Pels (presentations by Pels and by Kripe/Zandbergen), and the "Beyond Utopia" project led by Chris Goto-Jones (presentations by Roth and Schneider). These presentations will then be used by three discussants as a stepping stone to illustrate the directions into which such research should be going. The discussants are Diny van Est (see Persoon & van Est 2000), Jane Guyer (see Guyer 2007) and Chris Goto-Jones.
Please register by emailing your name and surname to z.kripe@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Presentations
Peter Pels (Anthropology, Leiden):
"Towards an Ethnography of Modern Times: Seven Theses on the Anthropology of the Future"
Florian Schneider (LIAS, Leiden):
"The Futurities and Utopias of the Shanghai World Exposition - A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Expo 2010 Theme Pavilions"
Martin Roth (LIAS, Leiden):
"Another time? Narrative confusion and alternative temporality in videogames"
Zane Kripe & Dorien Zandbergen (Anthropology, Leiden):
"Kick-starting the future in the new economy: Perspectives from San Francisco, Amsterdam and Singapore"
Discussants
Diny van Est (Netherlands Court of Audit)
Chris Goto-Jones (Leiden University)
Jane Guyer (Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University)
Recommended reading
People attending the workshop are advised to read the following articles (available online):
* Persoon, Gerard A. and Diny M. E. van Est. 2000. The study of the future in anthropology in relation to the sustainability debate. Focaal 35: 7-28
* Guyer, Jane I. 2007. Prophecy and the near future: Thoughts on macroeconomic, evangelical, and punctuated time. American Ethnologist 34 (3): 409-421
Asiascape Vistas is a forum for discussion about the many and various dimensions of cyberculture found in or originating from East Asia. Its focus is on the interplay between these media and questions of politics & philosophy. Contributions are from the academic collective responsible for the core project, but other contributions will also be considered by that collective.
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