Reimagining Anthropological Knowledge: Perspectives, Practices, and Power
World Anthropological Union (WAU) Congress 2024
Johannesburg, South Africa
11th-15th November 2024

Submit a Paper, Round Table, or Workshop proposal:

Call for Papers - WAU Congress 2024
Deadline: May 6, 2024
Info: https://bit.ly/WAUcongressCfP

Call for Round Tables - WAU Congress 2024
Deadline: May 6, 2024
Info: https://bit.ly/WAUcongressRoundtables

Call for Workshops - WAU Congress 2024
Deadline: May 6, 2024
Info: https://bit.ly/WAUcongressWorkshops

Anthropology Southern Africa (ASnA) warmly invites you to join us in Mzansi/South Africa for the inaugural World Anthropological Union (WAU) Congress from November 11 to 15, 2024. Organized by Anthropology Southern Africa and hosted by the University of Johannesburg, this groundbreaking event promises a rich exploration of anthropological knowledge under the theme:
 
Reimagining Anthropological Knowledge: Perspectives, Practices, and Power

Anthropology, as with other disciplines in the arts and social sciences, has engaged over decades with multiple paradigmatic shifts and critiques of the ways in which anthropological knowledge is gathered, organised, presented and theorised.  From the 1960s onwards, anthropological knowledge has engaged with, and seen concomitant shifts in practice as a result of [post - ] theoretical movements:

Post-structuralism;
Post-modernism;
Post-colonialism;
Post-socialism;
Post-humanism;
Post- post-colonialism -> decolonial shift;
Post-truth.

Recent shifts in some spaces have also critiqued even the notion of ‘post-’, such as the decolonial movement, for example, which argues that post-colonialism does not take critique far enough, and that social theory should strive instead for decolonial approaches.
All of these critiques share a core concern with recognising the constructedness of knowledge, and the power relations that underlie what we know and how we know it. Anthropology has a slightly different perspective to many other social science disciplines in that the discipline itself is premised on a recognition of the inherent value of plural knowledge forms, through cultural relativism and an historic and contemporary disciplinary stance against ethnocentrism.
Against this set of concerns, we propose a WAU Congress that engages with anthropological knowledge making in its various forms, recognising theoretical, geographical, socio-political contextual and ontological differences in how anthropological knowledge is made, transmitted and distributed in varied spaces.
 
We seek papers, round tables, and workshops that speak, but are not limited to:
• Changing fields of anthropological subdisciplines;
• The politics of producing social, cultural, linguistic, biological and paleo- anthropological knowledge;
• Ideas and ideals of ethnographic and ethnological practice;
• Post-covid practices in anthropological knowledge making;
• Digital worlds and the role of new technologies in fieldwork;
• The legitimacy of museums and collections as knowledge repositories;
• Ideas of truth and/ or post-truth in knowledge-making and representation;
• Anthropology as the humbling practice of learning;
• Tensions between local knowledge production and academic knowledge production;
• Disaggregating local knowledges in light of critical decolonial perspectives;
• Challenges and successes of the decolonial imperative;
• Decoloniality and criticality: overlaps, tensions, and differences;
• The politics of disseminating knowledges;
• Manifestations of hegemony in knowledge production, and their dangers;
• The knowledges which one can’t quite see, hear, touch, feel, smell;
• Survival, revival and flourishing in a “post”- catastrophic world;
• Changing ethics, methods and techniques in ethnographic research;  
• (Re)production of hegemony and hierarchy in anthropological research;
• Pleasure, joy and fun in anthropological research;
• Anthropology out of the “Ivory towers”;
• “Studying up” and anthropology of institutions/elites etc;
• Creativity and the art in/of/as research.

Information/ Questions: info [@] waucongress.org

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The World Anthropological Union (WAU) is an inclusive, cooperative forum that invigorates transnational anthropologies. WAU is the interface that unites the missions of the IUAES and the WCAA, galvanizing person-to-person international dialogues and stimulating cooperative exchange among anthropological associations. As a member of the ISC and the CIPSH, WAU represents the ethical and scientific values of the field as the discipline's primary international organization. Information: https://waunet.org