Sovereignty, 2004
by
andSCA Biannual Meeting
Sovereignty
April 30 + May 1, 2004
Governor Hotel, Portland, OR
For more information, contact Bruce Grant (Swarthmore C) or Lisa Rofel (UC Santa Cruz), organizers.
It is commonplace to remark that globalization everyday rewrites the bounds of politics, persons, and nature. As scholars we are left to track and understand, necessarily, the artefacts of these continual remakings.
Inviting the most compelling inquiries into emergent sovereignties today, the SCA Spring 2004 meeting looks to provoke discussion on social orders new and old.
Etymologies tell us that "sovereign," from the popular Latin,superanus, marks the state of the sublime, the sacred on earth, the above, but not quite. Over the last decade, scholars have pressed at the limits of this mobile definition, with its mix of divine promise and mortal panic. The sovereign has the power to name, to mark reality, to establish coin, to be the equivalence by which value is made. But the union of reason, capital, and violence that normally endows sovereign power is hardly economical. Sovereign markers create exceptions and emergencies which exist both inside and outside of that power. Sovereign markers excel, stand out, exceed, and overwhelm. What are their premises, and what are their after-effects? In what sense might sovereign power become a spectral presence whose mimesis links it to powerful forgeries? When ideas of the sacred are entwined with sovereign power, and life itself becomes the sacred terrain for forms of governance, potentially catastrophic regimes can emerge in the name of protecting “bare” life. Debates about the legal ambiguities built into sovereignty, in turn, raise questions about the violence afforded the modern state toward its own citizens. But what of the potential disruptions to this uneasy coherence of sovereignty and internal governance? How are distinctive sovereignties differently localized or articulated in relation to one another? How do the universalizing premises of scholarship and politics of sovereignty get mobilized to travel across differences, even as they are in constant reformulation through those very encounters?
Among the themes invited for individual paper and panel proposals are the intersections of power in places, bodies, and orders; divinities; organized and disorganized religions; new imperialisms and new NGO humanisms; the power to name; the making of rules and the exceptions to rule; law, fear, and violence; security and secrecy; the exclusions and inclusions of citizenship and censorship; genders, sexualities, and the theory of rights; queering sovereign realms; the implausibilities and excesses that underscore power in its parodic realisms; coin, currency, value and the transcendence of nation-state idioms in global markets; scientific imaginaries and the rule of knowledge; spaces, boundaries, and the markings of the deterritorial. In these contexts, we ask where anthropology makes its voices in these conversations, and what methods we take to better do our work.
In addition to proposed panels, featured speakers in organized plenaries and workshops include: Ana Alonso, Veena Das, James Ferguson, Saba Mahmood, Joe Masco, Bill Maurer, Elizabeth Povinelli, and Kath Weston. The David Schneider Memorial Lecture will be given by Mahmood Mamdani, with Paulla Ebron and Donald Moore as discussants.
Program:
Friday, April 30th, 2004
9:00am—10:45am
Plenary Session I, Location: Renaissance Room, 3rd Floor
Chair: Bruce Grant (Swarthmore C)
James Ferguson (Stanford U) Governing Extraction: New Spatializations of Order and Disorder in Neoliberal Africa
Bill Maurer (UC Irvine) Due Diligence: Scienter and Reasonable Care…Offshore
Kath Weston (Harvard U) Elsewheres of a Sovereign State: The Offshore as Incarceration
Friday, April 30th
11:00am—12:45pm
States of Science, Location: Renaissance Room, 3rd Floor
Chair: Mike Fortun (RPI)
Mike and Kim Fortun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) US Toxicology in Time and Culture
Omar al-Dewachi (Harvard U) Doctors without/in Empires: Empire, State, and the Creation of the National Medical Doctor in Iraq
Kaushik Sunder Rajan (UC Irvine) Sovereign Consumers/Sovereign States: Transnational Configuration of Genomics
Mei Zhan (UC Irvine) Civet Cats, Fried Grasshoppers, and David Beckham's Pajamas: making bodies in post-SARS China
Tim Choy (Ohio State U) Articulated Knowledges: Experts, Environments, Emergents
Sovereign Terrain: Governing Bodies and Places in Crisis, Location: Alder West Room, 1st Floor
Chair: Ilana Feldman (Columbia U)
Miriam Ticktin (Colombia U) Sovereignty, Suffering and Citizenship Considered
Doug Smith (Stanford U) The Homeless Specter in the No-Places of Sovereignty
Rebecca Stein (Duke U) Israeli Leisure and the Question of Palestine (Again)
Ilana Feldman (Columbia U) Subjects of Aid: Humanitarianism and Sovereignty in Gaza
Secrecy and Sovereignty, Location: Alder East Room, 1st Floor
Chair: Thomas Blom Hansen (U Edinburgh)
Simon Turner (Roskilde U, Denmark) Secrets and Lies in Burundi Politics
Karen Coelho (U Arizona) Water Engineers Digging for Truth, Policing the Lines
Tresa Thomas (U New Mexico) The Threatened Sovereign: Strategies of Difference and Imperialism in the War on Drugs at the US-Mexico Border
Workshop 1: The Techne of Practice and the Logic of Sovereignty, Location: Vault Room, 2nd Floor
Saba Mahmood (UC Berkeley) (Leader) with Nadia Abu El-Haj (Barnard C) and Bill Maurer (UC Irvine)
(advance registration is not required for workshops)
A Roundtable on Human Subjects Issues, Location: Fireside Room, 2nd Floor
(Session runs from 11:00am—12:00pm only)
Stuart Plattner (NSF)
Dan Segal (Pitzer C)
Deborah Heath (Lewis and Clark C)
Friday, April 30th
2:00pm—3:45pm
Transcendent Sovereign: Religious Refashionings between Diaspora and Empire, Location: Renaissance Room, 3rd Floor
Chair: Engseng Ho (Harvard U)
Tamara Neuman (Independent) The Pursuit of Religious Sovereignty in the West Bank
Engseng Ho (Harvard U) Ratcheting the Rhetoric Upwards
Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn (Harvard U) Sacrificing for the Nation? Memory, Fear, and the Desire for Sovereignty
Tashi Rabgey (Harvard U) Discussant
Moving Beyond Sovereignty, Race, and Citizenship: Theorizing Indigenous Autonomy in the 21st Century, Location: Alder West Room, 1st Floor
Chairs: Darren Ranco (Dartmouth C) and Audra Simpson (Cornell U)
Darren Ranco (Dartmouth C) Procedural Justice, Normative Science, and Rights: An Indigenous Critique of Liberal Modes of Citizenship
Jessica Catellino (School of American Research and New York U) Relational Sovereignty and Florida Seminole Casinos: Toward a Theory of Sovereignty as Interdependency
Audra Simpson (Cornell U) Sovereignties Colliding: Mohawk Border Crossing, the International Boundary Line and The Racialized Life of Treaty
Mishuana Goeman (UC Berkeley) Sovereignty, Mapping, and Native American Cultural Production
Taiaiake Alfred (U Victoria) Discussant
Incarcerations and Exceptions, Location: Alder East Room, 1st Floor
Chair: Bonnie Urciuoli (Hamilton C)
Arzoo Osanloo (U Washington) The Modern State, Sovereign Authority, and Human Rights: What is the Measure of Mercy?
Lorna A. Rhodes (U Washington) Changing the Subject: Conversation and Control in Supermaximum Confinement
Peter Rawtischer (UC Berkeley) Kidnapped Body Politics
Kristen Drybread (Columbia U) Evil Enters the Garden: A Case of Murder Inside a Juvenile Reformatory
Tahir Naqvi (UC Berkeley) The Multiverse of Ungovernability: Crime, Democracy, and Globalization in Contemporary Karachi
Qualifying Citizens: Life around the Law, Location: Vault Room, 2nd Floor
Chair: Lieba Faier (UC San Diego)
Lieba Faier (UC San Diego) Filipina Migrants, Immigration Laws, and Domestic Exceptions in Contemporary Japan
Cathryn Clayton (Harvard U/U Macau) The Nonexistent Macanese
Falu Bakrania (SUNY Binghamton) Reconfiguring Cultural Citizenship: The Subaltern Nationalisms of British Asian Youth Cultures
Anand Pandian (UC Berkeley) Governing the Bestial Heart: On Crime, Descent, and Deceit in Postcolonial South India
Peter Cuasay (U Washington) Sovereignty Beneath the Fold: Law as Deferral in the Philippines
Border Regimes, Location: Fireside Room, 2nd Floor
Chair: Ana Alonso (U Arizona)
Brenda Chalfin (U Florida) Sovereignty as Industry: Producing a Global Customs Regime
Anita Hannig (Reed C) Les Indésirables: Encountering Sans Papiers in the Interstices of Knowledge, Power, and Space
Netta van Vliet (Duke U) State of Exception: The Mas'ha Campsite and the Fight Against Israel's "Separation Wall"
Tamar Wilson (U Missouri, St. Louis) Anomaly as Political Threat: Undocumented Mexicans in the United States
Friday, April 30th
4:00pm—6:00pm
David Schneider Memorial Lecture, Location: Billiard Room, 2nd Floor
Chair: Lisa Rofel (UC Santa Cruz)
Mahmood Mamdani (Columbia U) Post-Apartheid Perspectives on America and Israel
Paulla Ebron (Stanford U) Discussant
Donald Moore (UC Berkeley) Discussant
Friday, April 30th
6:00-7:00
Reception, Location: Renaissance Room, 3rd Floor
Cash Bar, Hors d’Oeuvres
Saturday, May 1st, 2004
9:00am—10:45am
Plenary Session II, Location: Billiard Room, 2nd Floor
Chair: Pauline Strong (UT Austin; President of SCA)
Ana Alonso (U Arizona) Spectacles of Sovereignty: The Importance of the Visual in Forms of Governmentality
Veena Das (Johns Hopkins U) Sovereignty, Kinship, and the Argument from Nature
Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia U) Loving v. the State of Empire
Saturday, May 1st
11:00am—12:45pm
Subverting the Currency of the Sovereign, Location: Library, 2nd Floor
Chair: Robert Foster (U Rochester)
Beth Notar (Trinity C) Revolutionary Reclaiming: Guerrilla Currencies in 1930s China
Allison Truitt (Cornell U) Recovering Venerable Ho' Notes
Jane I. Guyer (Johns Hopkins U) National Idioms for Monetarism: the Nigerian Economy Represented under Military Rule
Sovereignty in an Age of Democracy, Location: Alder West Room, 1st Floor
Chair: Ilana Gershon (Yale U)
Ilana Gershon (Yale U) The Paradox in the Parliament: When Maori Chiefs are Members of the NZ Parliament
Hoon Song (U Notre Dame) Trash and the Fetus: Negativity in a Right-Wing Imaginary
Thomas Blom Hansen (U Edinburgh) Performers of Sovereignty: On the Privatization of Security in Urban South Africa
Eric Worby (Yale U) Night of the Chikwambo: Promiscuous Sovereignty and the Democracy of Terror
Conflicted Boundaries of Sovereignty: Expansions, Fragmentations, Alternatives, Location: Vault Room, 2nd Floor
Chair: Ismael Vaccara (U Washington)
Ismael Vaccaro (U Washington) Chair
Heather Lazrus (U Washington) Buoyant Sovereignties: Global Climate Change and Tuvaluan Sovereignty
Courtney Carothers (U Washington) Creating Sovereign Experts
Julie Brugger (U Washington) Where “the People” are Sovereign: Public Land and the American Political Imagination
Amanda Poole (U Washington) Displaced Sovereignty: Repatriation, Diaspora, and the Making of the Eritrean Nation-State
Brian Tilt (U Washington) Locating the State: Sovereignty and Resistance in Personal Narratives about Industrial Pollution in Sichuan, China
Modernity and Divinity: Religion Inside and Outside Sovereignty, Location: Fireside Room, 2nd Floor
Chair: Mayfair Yang (UC Santa Barbara)
Mayfair Yang (UC Santa Barbara) Secular Sovereignty and Popular Religion in China
Mandana Limbert (Queens C/CUNY) Questions of Legitimacy in a Sultanate and its Spectral Theocracy
Esa Ozyurek (UC San Diego) The Headscarf Issue in the Turkish Parliament: Reflections on Center of Power in a Democracy’
Jeanette Edwards (U Manchester) "You Knit Me in My Mother's Womb": English Baptist Ministers and New Reproductive Technologies
Saturday, May 1st
2:00pm—3:45pm
Neoliberal Gambles, Location: Library, 2nd Floor
Chair: Carol Silverman (U Oregon)
Maya Parson (UNC Chapel Hill) Spectral Sovereigns, Neoliberal Leviathans: State, Citizen and Social Contract in Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua
Emma Kowal (U Melbourne, UC Berkeley) Modernity and other Lost Objects: Suspicion and Desire in Australian Indigenous Health
Sven Ouzman (UC Berkeley and National Museum of South Africa) The Nature of Stewardship: Contemporary Challenges to Native Sovereignty
Kim Christen (UC Santa Cruz) Cybersovereignties: Networking the Outback
Carol Silverman (U Oregon) Discussant
Spectral Forms and National Sovereignty, Location: Alder West Room, 1st Floor
Chair: Ann Anagnost (U Washington)
Naveeda Khan (Johns Hopkins U) A Consideration of National Sovereignty through the Friendship of Children and Jinns
Lisa Mitchell (Bowdoin C) The Appearance of Affect: Death and the Re-Making of Sovereignty in Telugu South India
Deirdre Leong de la Cruz (Columbia U) First Filipino Apparitions: The Virgin Mary and the Emergent Nation in Late 19th Century
Dard Neuman (Columbia U) From Native Informant to Celebrity: Technology, Nation and the Hindustani Musician
Workshop 2: Engaging the “New Normal”: Terror, Homeland Security, and American Power, Location: Vault Room, 2nd Floor
Joe Masco (U Chicago) (Leader) with Monica Schoch-Spana (U Pittsburgh)
(advance registration is not required for workshops)
Globalization Sovereignty and the Remaking of Power, Location: Fireside Room, 2nd Floor
Chair: Kamari Clarke (Yale U)
Kamari Clarke (Yale U) Sovereignty Revisited: Universal Personhood and the Undermining Citizenship
George Baca (Goucher C) U.S. Military Power and Myths of Popular Sovereignty: The State of the Exception in American Nationalism
Guillaume Boccara (CNRS, Paris) Exotic Clients or Uncivilized Terrorists: State Sovereignty, Global Governmentality and Indigenous Peoples in Chile
Saturday, May 1st
4:00pm-5:00pm
Closing Session: Polemics, Location: Alder West Room, 1st Floor
Chairs: Bruce Grant (Swarthmore C) and Lisa Rofel (UC Santa Cruz)