The general aim of the project was to generate research activities that would strengthen anthropological research in Norway by an increased engagement in theoretical development with a greater number of significant publications in leading international journals by Norwegian anthropologists as an important visible result.
The project came about as a response to recommendations from the evaluation report Social and Cultural Anthropological Research in Norway: An evaluation. Two main points from this report was that social anthropological research in Norway needed to increase its theoretical ambitions and that Norwegian anthropologists should become more visible in international anthropological debates. The follow-up committee recommended that research networks should be established with partners from several anthropological research institutions in order to achieve these goals. The answer to these recommendations was Anthropos and the Material.
About
The main thrust of this project was to explore the intersections between humans and the material. The focus was on changing perceptions and figurations of the anthropos, particularly in relation to its material aspects of existence, i.e. its relations to the environment broadly defined.
The project was organized around three parallel themes: domestication practices, economic practices, and ritual practices. Each of these were explored in relation to a perspective that perceives humans and materials as always and already enmeshed. The project thus aimed to shed light on the changing constitutions of the anthropos, and how it relates to and relies upon its material conditions of existence, and thus to contribute to crafting an anthropology that is better able to capture these conditions and processes.
The members of the network brought with them a focus on different topics: on material forces and relations of dependency to attempts to theorize sociality, as well as globalization and how 'worlds are held together' to more recent foci on domestication processes, local forms of global reforestation projects and questions related to the multiplicity of global financial, environmental and cultural crises. Some basic assumptions tie them together and give shape to the project:
- What significance do various approaches to materiality and materialisations have for comparative studies of the human existential condition?
- How can the field of anthropology contribute to conceptualizing, studying, and writing 'the material'?
- What are the theoretical implications of the current shifts, and what is the edge through which anthropology can make a difference?
- How can attention to materiality help us to rethink anthropos in anthropology?
By setting up a common research focus within all the three domains the project sought to ensure that the research across the three domains would yield comparable insights of theoretical value
Background
A major inspiration for this project was the twin increasing concerns in anthropology and related disciplines with 'the natural world' and 'the material', the latter often referred to as a ‘turn to the material’. A turn to the material implies a renewed focus on processes whereby forms acquire stability over time. Also referred to as the ‘performative turn’, this move engages an attention to practice and implies a shift from a sole focus on meaning and interpretation, to a concern with how entities are enacted or come into being.
This involves, in turn, an ethnographic attention to the ways in which specific practices, situated in time and space, are generative of specific realities. Inspired both by science and technology studies and concerns in anthropology about the problematic nature of dichotomies such as subject-object and nature-culture, this turn to the material and to performativity has paved the way for reconceptualizing the role of theory and analysis as ‘generative of objects in the world.’ In the words of Frida Hastrup, anthropological knowledge-making then, is a truly lateral endeavour, in which ‘one world is not a version of another, but form part of a shared world continuously under construction, in which givens and entities have to be created as such'.
One other inspiration for this project was the post-colonial critique. Similarly to the material and performative turn in anthropology, this critique has served to destabilize hegemonic Western ordering of the human and its surroundings, although still retaining that unequal relationships in the world are a part of the colonial legacy. By engaging a variety of different ontologies, not as objects of study, but rather as propositions of what it means to be human, postcolonial scholars have brought about a rethinking of the ontological premises inherent in fundamental dichotomies of human-animal, nature-culture, and subject-object.
Objectives
Primary objective
The project's primary objective was to establish a research network with partners from several anthropological research institutions, targeting the thematic area People, Nature and Environments of the ISP call. The network brought together well established researchers with broad and diverse research experiences and regional knowledge as well as theoretical leanings, focusing on four shared basic assumptions. These shared assumptions were to produce a space for developing new theoretical insights. The network would enable a crossing of the institutional boundaries of different departments nationally, and secure cooperation between related fields of research.
Secondary Objectives
A result of reaching the project's primary objectives would be to generate research activities that would strengthen anthropological research in Norway by an increased engagement in theoretical development with a greater number of significant publications in leading international journals, making Norwegian anthropologists more visible internationally.
Events
The Reconfiguration of Labour: Reflections for Contemporary Anthropology
Time and place: June 12-13, 2015, Soria Moria Hotel, Oslo.
In this workshop the project invited a broad anthropological engagement with our world’s manifold and shifting labour realities. We were particularly interested in grounded ethnographies from different parts of world-society that examine labour regimes and labour processes both as expressions of specific histories and as forms of practices, knowledges and experiences.
Engaging the Material: Challenges to Anthropology
Time and place: Nov. 13-14, 2014, Soria Moria Hotel, Oslo.
In this workshop the project invited contributions that critically engage anthropology and the material by taking an active stance in contemporary debates on the future of anthropology and the role, if any, materials, materiality or materialism play in that, as well as papers that reflect on past conceptualisations.
De-Centering Domestication: Exploring the Otherwise
Time and place: Nov. 10-12, 2014, Lysebu Hotel.
This workshop called for participants to rethink, and to de-center, conventional approaches to domestication. We asked how conventional narratives sustain biosocial worlds, but also how they can be challenged ethnographically