CFP: Peoples and Cultures of the World – International Conference

Call for papers

Peoples and Cultures of the World

International Conference

Palermo University, January 24-25, 2019

Building 19, Viale delle Scienze

Rooms: Aula Seminari A and B

Deadline for submitting proposals: 5 December 2018

In this interdisciplinary conference we aim to study different peoples and cultures of the world by taking into account the various ways peoples and cultures define themselves and others, thus shaping their identities. The organising committee (including anthropologists, geographers, semioticians and urban planners) is open to all disciplines and invites contributions from these and other fields of study. We aim to explore the complex relationships being established between cultural dynamics and identities in their spatial and/or chronological dimensions. In our modern world, how can we still talk of homogeneous, spatially defined cultures? In what terms, nowadays, can we conceive a people and a culture stressing their various aspects, as they are stressed in the culture itself? Or, on the contrary, should we resort to other concepts and theories to define peoples by differences and by comparison? In its turn, how does globalization contribute to the delineating, crystallizing or altering of identities? How can we look more effectively at cultural differences through the lens of social sciences? And, most of all, what is the role played by natives and ethnic minorities in our modern world? We are interested in discussing these questions and many others freely posed by speakers in this context. More particularly, we would like to focus on the variety of cultures in the world, on their diversity comparatively studied, but we are also specially inclined to discuss top-down or externally imposed politics and the types of resistance used by natives to escape these hegemonic strategies. We invite papers that analyse peoples and cultures (social communities, ethnic groups, indigenous minorities, etc.) considering their specific features and differences, possibly taking into account the theorizations underlying the construction and deconstruction of collective identities. In this sense, we are interested in the role played by the scholar analyzing different cultures and their spatial dynamics, often fluid and somewhat controversial according to a political perspective.

The list of the themes we aim to discuss includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Cultural dynamics and single/plural belongings
Cultural contacts
Identity hybridizations and new forms of cultural belonging
Cultural theories and geo-anthropological mappings
Symbolic, real and virtual spaces
Centres and peripheries
Globalisation, difference and identity
Nations, territories and global systems
Food, nutrition and identity
Cities and visual narrations
Ethnographic documentaries and visual imaginaries
Ethnographic methods, fieldwork and epistemology of social sciences
Ethnographies and case studies
Rites and cultures
Language, thought and reality
Culture and ecologic and social sustainability
Tourism and belonging
Ethnic minorities, human rights and resistance
Diasporas and migrations
Colonialism and imperialism