Department of social anthropology seminar with André Iteanu

The Department of Social Anthropology has the pleasure to invite you to a seminar with André Iteanu from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.) and l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. He will present the following paper:

Disappearing World

Abstract
I begin by observing that people in the West seem to be very dissatisfied with the social systems in which they live. So much so that they believe that Western societies poison everything around them, including their social system. It is thus perfectly normal for them to fear that, sooner or later, Western societies will die. I further argue that we have exported this negative view of the social to numerous places outside the West, in which people did not previously have a comparable critical view of their own social system. By comparing the situation of the Orokaiva of Papua New Guinea with that of the United States, I show that in both places these criticisms revolve around the transformation or disappearance of a certain type of social relations. While this problem is formulated in both cases in similar ways, the causes to which it is attributed are diametrically opposed. This difference reveals, within the framework of globalization, a drastic ideological difference between the two societies. I conclude by invoking some anthropological works that, in my view, help making sense of this phenomenon and of the ideological contrast it discloses.

Bionote
Andre Iteanu is Directeur d’Études at l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he heads the program Religions of Oceania, and Directeur de Recherche at the Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique. Iteanu has conducted extensive fieldwork among the Orokaiva in Papua New Guinea and among youth in the French banlieues, were he has also been a social worker for many years. His publications inlude La ronde des echanges (1984), Of relations and the dead (1994), and Parle et je t’ecouterais. Recits Et Traditions Des Orokaiva De Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinee (with Eric Schwimmer, 1996) In 2010 he edited a tribute to Daniel de Coppet La cohérence des sociétés - Mélanges en hommage à Daniel de Coppet. He has also made the much awarded ethnographic film Letter to the dead and the follow up Come back tomorrow.

All interested are welcome!

Best regards
BSAS Comittee