Face-to-Face: Connecting Distance and Proximity


Face-to-face interaction, compliance and confrontation, the conditions of intersubjectivity, identity/alterity in shifting contexts of distance and proximity: these are the central dimensions of anthropological research that we offer for discussion at EASA's 2004 conference in Vienna .

From a topical and theoretical perspective, the theme addresses core social and cultural problems. contemporary societies and cultures as spaces determined by regional diversities as well tendencies towards transnational connection by which these borders are constantly challenged and redefined.

The first dimension of our theme concerns this increase of global interconnections with heightened socio-cultural diversity. In today's world, these interconnections are going hand in hand with the construction of disjunctures, as well as with the sharp differentiation of identities and essentialising practices. Populism, fundamentalism, or xenophobia and racism are not vanishing in any way.

The European Union itself represents a case in point. Its redefinition is underway in the context not only of claims for social and cultural difference, but of different understandings what it unites. From an anthropological perspective such (political) processes remain however partial, as the historical conjuncture of Europe in the world-system is deeply associated with its postcolonial condition. On the one hand, new hierarchies between societies are simultaneously being introduced; whilst on the other, Europe 's multiple “faces” are often downplayed.

The conference's second dimension relates to reflections on the meaning of locality as a space of social connections, or on the construction of cultural difference as a product of the very nature of social relations. Many of today's anthropological discourses have informed, and are informed and challenged by, everyday concepts of culture and identity. Historically, the classical authors of social theory gave face-to-face relations a specific role in defining (bounded) culture, (traditional) community and (large-scale) society. Today, such thoughts have been elaborated and transformed into concepts such as civil society, imagined communities, socialities, virtual communities, or of the Creole (or hybrid) character of culture. In other words, connecting proximity and distance is as much an aim as a condition for anthropological enquiry.

"Face-to-face" also points towards the sort of methodological concerns that, in ever renewed forms, continue to represent a central strength of our field: ethnography. They will receive particular attention at this conference in the new forms in which these methods continue to represent much of the field's unique strength and quality. This third dimension of EASA's Vienna meeting may be designated “Recasting Ethnographic Presence”.

In the course of our methodological reflections, empirical analyses and theoretical debates EASA's meeting will centrally reflect different national and regional anthropological traditions in the context of reciprocal interactions within a global anthropology.