Norwegian Anthropology Day at the Royal Anthropological Institute
The Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) has in recent years organised a series of annual full-day presentations of other countries’ anthropologies, conveyed by speakers and panels from the countries in question. In 2015, the spotlight is on Norwegian anthropology.
Main content
Upon invitation from the RAI, the Norwegian Anthropology Day has been organised by the University of Bergen’s Department of Social Anthropology, through its institutional strategic project “Denaturalizing Difference: Challenging the Production of Global Social Inequality”, which is a collaborative effort with Bergen’s Chr. Michelsen Institute and the University of Oslo’s Department of Social Anthropology. Convenors on behalf of “Denaturalizing Difference” are Prof. Edvard Hviding and Dr. Synnøve K.N. Bendixsen.
While the current breadth, historical depth and institutional diversity of Norwegian anthropology cannot be fully covered within the constraints of a one-day event, the day has been set up for wide-ranging intellectual exchanges. After an introductory comment on behalf of the organisers, a series of six keynote lectures will be given by prominent speakers from Norwegians universities and research institutes. These speakers will be covering the discipline’s national history, its consistent grounding in fieldwork and global ethnography, the long record of anthropological studies of Norwegian society as well as of applied engagements on the development policy scene, the growth and proliferation of public anthropology, and the present national diversity of the discipline.
These lectures are followed by a panel discussion that includes brief presentations by representatives of Norwegian anthropology in and outside of academia, PhD candidates and MA students, and British anthropology. The panel will seek to engage the audience in plenary discussion about particular epistemological and political configurations of anthropology in Norway, and about differences and similarities between Norwegian and British anthropological practice.
The Norwegian Anthropology Day will conclude on a reflective comment to be given by Dame Marilyn Strathern.
See the full program here.