The 40^th Annual Meeting of the Israeli Anthropological Association

The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, 3-4 July 2012

"Culture?" Anthropological Perspectives

"Culture?" is the theme of the 40^th Meeting of the Israeli Anthropological Association. Over the past few decades, the use of culture as a main theoretical concept in anthropology is no longer self-evident. Concepts like "ontology" compete with it within anthropology. At the same time, it has become a key term across multiple public and academic discussions on, for example, "multi-cultural society", "culture wars", "cultural proficiency", "high/low/popular culture", "digital culture," "cultural heritage", and “cultural logics”. In the 2012 Meeting of the Israeli Anthropological Association, we seek to navigate between discussions about culture as an apparently necessary theoretical construct in anthropology and between culture as a social construct with popular, political, academic and professional uses. We want to discuss how and to what degree (or if at all) culture, as a term and a concept, can serve current anthropology, and the anthropology of the contemporary emergent world. How in particular has this concept served anthropology in Israel and anthropology of Israel, and in what ways (or whether) it can do so in the future. We want to ethnographically investigate its growing uses in the public arena and in neighboring disciplines, asking who uses this term, how, when and what for, and how is culture reified, objectified and marketed in the process. We want to reflect on how (and whether) the notion of culture has become a social fact for the public, while anthropologists continue to debate its meaning and utility and consider ways to qualify the term.

The Israeli Anthropological Association invites proposals for sessions -- and, in special cases, for single presentations* -- that engage with the theme "Culture?" from anthropological perspectives, on the basis of ethnographic research. We invite debate on the place, usages, meanings, inventions, changes and politics of "culture" in the contemporary world, in diverse anthropological research-fields, in applied anthropology, and in the interfaces between cultural anthropology, other branches of anthropology, other academic disciplines, and public discourse.

 To submit proposal use this FORM

For more information and answers for questions you can write to the IAA email account :

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