Dear colleagues,
We invite paper proposals to our panel “P101: The Return of Anthropometry: Anthropological Interventions in Digital Positivism and the Body Politic” for EASA2020 (21-24 July).
Short abstract:
This panel applies Boasian critiques of anthropometry to the digitizationof bodies. Contributions discuss topics such as biometric citizenship, the digitization of poverty, social welfare and humanitarian action, or the use
of AI in organizing labor and to govern political participation and access.
Long abstract:
Anthropometric determinism, the 19th century notion that the human body, individual personalities, cultural traits, and social groups can be reduced to numbers, is back. Contemporary anthropology was, essentially, forged alongside, and fighting against, this idea that informed pseudoscientific practices, namely Euro-American racist ideologies at the heart of so many anti-immigrant and refugee sentiments, colonialisms, fascisms and a wide array of ‘othering’ practices. Especially the Boasian circle of anthropologists confronted and thoroughly undercut the use of biological determinism to stigmatize, alienate, surveil, and control the other. This panel looks at how anthropologists are doing this work again as the ideas behind anthropometry have returned alongside and through biometric technologies, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. The digital transformations of the body politic, and with them a renewed sense of positivism in (some) social sciences, have again reared the ugly head of Euro-American ideologies of control through the quantified self, now mediated by binary code. Contributions to this panel confront issues such as:
– the proliferation of biometric citizenship
– the digitization of poverty, for example, through zombie debt in the USA
– the use of biometric technologies to govern access to government services through apps like Aadhaar in India
– the digitization of humanitarian action and an increased production of data about beneficiaries
– the rise of facial recognition as surveillance and security technologies, e.g. to track yellow vest protestors in France
– the use of AI and bots in organizing labor and political participation around the world
– the sociocultural dimensions of datavaillance and the platformized economy of data
Convenors:
Stephanie Ketterer Hobbis (Wageningen University)
Geoffrey Hobbis (University of Groningen)
Paper proposals should be submitted no later than January 20, 2020 via
https://nomadit.co.uk/conferen
The general call for papers including further instructions on paper
submission can be found here:
https://easaonline.org/confere
If you have any questions, please get in touch with us via the conference
website or at stephanie.hobbis@wur.nl and g.g.a.hobbis@rug.nl
Best wishes,
Stephanie and Geoff