2007 SAE ROUNDTABLES AT AAA MEETINGS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
ROUNDTABLE #1
BALZER, Marjorie Mandelstam (Georgetown) �How do we define Europe?� How far East does Europe go? This discussion is stimulated by ideas of Norwegian theorist Pal Kolsto and others that Central, Eastern and Former Soviet Union states are �political construction sites� with key values and histories contested for major stakes. What are the expressed values and policies that make some nation-building leaders look to Western Europe for models, while others do not? Theories of Czech historian Miroslav Hroch concerning the patterned rise of small, cohesive Central European nationalisms will be critiqued. This discussion will transcend ethnonational generalizing about Slavic peoples, Scandinavians, Baltic peoples and others. What are the sociopolitical and economic conditions that have created acceptance into the European Union? What are the failures? Why have some �Colored Revolutions� been more lasting than others? Can we apply ideas of �path dependency� to Europe? Is geography destiny in the Caucasus? Are Western European nationalisms more conducive to the stimulation of civil rights today than countries with Soviet legacies? If so, why? What makes the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg an arbiter of cases taken from the Russian Federation, including Chechnya? What is the significance of religious variation in Europe? �Europe� is not defined but debated, to encourage discussion of interethnic relations, multiple levels of identity, and changing national values.
ROUNDTABLE #2
DUBISCH, Jill (Northern Arizona University) �The Changing Religious Landscape in Europe� �The recent influx of migrants into western Europe, the post-socialist revival of religion in Eastern Europe, and the turning to pre-Christian forms of religion and spirituality by pagans and other �New Age� groups have created a European religious landscape that is both diverse and fluctuating. This roundtable will explore this diversity and its implications � religious, social, and political � for our understanding of Europe today. Among the issues which may be explored are the relationship of both new and old religions to national identity, the Catholic and Protestant responses to non-Christian religions, the use of traditional religious sites (such as churches and pilgrimage sites) for new forms of spiritual devotion, and the creation of new sacred sites in the European landscape.
ROUNDTABLE #3
LINDQUIST, Galina (University of Stockholm) �Knowledge, Authority and Charisma: Medical Fields in the Post-Soviet Space��� This round-table discussion will address multiple medical systems, and their engagements with official and folk religiosity, politics and the market, in post-soviet societies. During socialism, many of these countries had a well-developed healthcare system, paralleled by a strong undercurrent of alternative approaches, such as acupuncture, homeopathy, and a variety of �bioenergotherapies�. After the end of socialism, these alternative systems came out of the shadows, to claim their share of the new market-driven health-care, against the background of a collapsing healthcare system, renewed interest in mysticism, magic and the Oriental spirituality, and a new import of globalized New Age practices. In many countries these currents engaged with local religious practices and charismatic figures; some turned into institutions in their own right, such as Vanda in Bulgaria or Djuna in Russia; other became infamous and disappeared from the limelight, like Kashpirovski. State authorities try to control this explosion of alternative healing, e.g., by co-opting local cults, by demanding licenses and introducing exams for alternative healers, with unconvincing results. Themes for discussion can include the strategies medical researchers resort to, to survive disintegration of official science; stratification of biomedicine and new private investments into high technology; interaction between bio-medicine and alternative ideologies and techniques of treatment and care; attempts of authorities to control alternative sectors, and professionalization of popular healing experts; charismatic healers and their involvement with politics and media; relations between the official church and medical care; and other topics dealing with medical systems in the post-soviet space.
ROUNDTABLE #4
JAMES, James (University of Mary Washington) �Building,
Preserving, Destroying: The Politics of Architecture in Contemporary Europe�� The
construction and preservation of urban spaces and edifices constitute one of
the most powerful and contested forms of symbolic activity in European towns
and cities. Buildings and spaces such as Warsaw�s Old Town, the Coventry Cathedral, and the modernist Hansaviertel in West Berlin were invested with
immense significance in the wake of World War II. Similarly, the reconstruction
of buildings like Dresden�s Frauenkirche and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior
in Moscow, the razing of many socialist era edifices, and the construction of
new business, government, and commercial centers have carried powerful
symbolism in the decades since 1990. In this roundtable we will discuss
anthropological approaches to the politics of architecture in Europe, with
emphasis on the role of construction, preservation, and demolition in
constructing local, regional, national, and European categories of cultural
tradition and belonging; symbolizing state power and hegemonic cultural values;
and giving monumental expression to discourses of progress, loss, and
recuperation.
ROUNDTABLE #5
KARANOVIC, Jelena (New York University) �Mass Media and Europeanization�� Mass
media facilitate a range of identities and imaginaries and yet they are often
considered as carriers of cultural identity and political legitimacy. This
roundtable addresses to what extent the production, distribution, and consumption
of mass media in Europe could be considered a site of the construction of
contemporary �Europeanness.� Are some media particularly amenable to such a
project? If so, what imaginings inform them, what representations do they
convey, and how are they structured institutionally? Conversely, we could
address the fault lines of the shared communicative space created by the
consumption, circulation, and production of mass media in the European Union
(including TV, print, internet, etc.). What global dimensions of mass media in Europe are seen as desirable, and for what reasons? How are mass media in Europe related to
recurrent phenomena such as national media policies, cultural industries and
linguistic differences, as well as to emergent ones such as transnational ownership
and media convergence? What new �others� are referenced in this process? How do
mass media in the European Union represent minority religious identities and
ethnicities? From varied reactions to the publication of Danish cartoons of Muhamed,
to illegal downloading of music and films, how do contested instances of mass
media distribution challenge (or reinforce) notions of a European media space? Do
new technologies of communication contribute to multiple or alternative
projects of Europeanization? Finally, what existing (anthropological) resources
could provide materials for teaching about media and mediation in Europe?
ROUNDTABLE #6
TERRIO, Susan (Georgetown) �Rethinking Childhood, Adolescence, and the
State�� The category of the child and the definition of childhood itself are
increasingly contested domains of public policy and cultural politics in
national and supranational arenas. New conceptions of childhood emphasize their
agency, choices, and decision making abilities. International legal instruments
and human rights discourses such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child
construct children not only as vulnerable and developing beings but as rational
and accountable agents with enhanced moral and legal responsibility for their
actions. Even as global attention has focused on the plight of child refugees,
child soldiers, child prostitution, homeless children, and child laborers, a
redefinition of the child as a agent with both rights and obligations has
coincided with harsher punishment in state institutions from the schools to the
courts. As Sharon Stephens argued dominant notions of the �good� childhood, the
�right� family, and the �proper� upbringing are challenged by groups of
children deemed �matter out of place� whether at work, in the press, on the
street, or in prison. The specter of street children, child prostitutes, or
under aged workers, particularly foreigners, is deeply threatening at a time
when Fortress Europe is increasingly fearful of migratory flows and border crossings.
These children blur the accepted boundaries between the child and the adult in
part because their behaviors simultaneously highlight both their agency and
marginality. As more children are on the move, live outside of normative
families, whether by choice or coercion, and appear in the asylum and migration
pipelines, states respond in different ways. In some cases they categorize
children as victims because of their vulnerability to exploitation and protect
them. In other cases because of their complicity in irregular migration and
participation in illicit practices, states classify them as delinquents and
deny them protection or prosecute and/or deport them. This roundtable proposes
to start a conversation on the impact of a human rights discourse on childhood
across Europe in a context marked by growing ambivalence regarding the child
victim and emerging anxieties concerning the child-adult.
ROUNDTABLE #7
WILSON, Thomas M. (Binghamton University) �Food, Drink and Identity in Europe�� Anthropologists are at the forefront of scholars who are increasingly examining the importance of consumption to changing notions of local, regional, national and supranational identity in Europe. As part of this interest, ethnographers have paid particular attention to the roles which food and drink have played in relations of integration, differentiation, resistance and domination, within and across regions, nations, states and �Europe�. This luncheon roundtable, suitably gathered over representative foods and drinks, provides an opportunity to explore how a focus on the production, distribution and consumption of food and drink can provide provocative insights into wider social, economic and political formations and processes. As a starting point we will consider how eating and drinking may be usefully seen as processes that support and/or oppose greater European integration, in part through the recognition and support of common and diverse European cultures and identities. We will also discuss how cultures of eating and drinking intersect with the politics of these actions.