News from the Networks

Thomas H. Eriksen (EASA President) and Valeria Siniscalchi (Networks liaison) invite the Networks convenors to a meeting on Thursday , July 21st (form 13:15 to 14:30)
This will be the occasion for those who convene the different EASA networks to get together to discuss the future of networks, some propositions about networks by the executive and the possibilities related to the growing number of active networks.

EASA Applied Anthropology Network

Title: Why the World Needs Anthropologists: Humanise IT!
Place: Tartu, Estonia, 4-5 November 2016
Plenary speakers: Dimitris Dalakoglou, Amber Case, Daniel Miller
More info and registration details available on: http://www.applied-anthropology.com/
Facebook page of the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1766649690237059/

About the event: Information and communication technologies are integral to our world. Digital engineers, designers, and computer programmers are the inventors and innovators of our time who greatly affect people’s everyday lives – and they need the assistance of anthropology in making human-friendly solutions. The symposium explores how digital designers and anthropologists benefit from each other’s knowledge and approaches. What is the role of culture in technology? How can technology-based thinking be humanised? And how can we get the most out of new technologies for those that use them

Sacral Communication and Healing Network

A new book has been published: Imre Lázár Dance of the Avatar : Embodying Gender and Culture through Dance, Nova Science New York :
Dance of the Avatar” is a comprehensive work and includes culturalstudies and anthropology of revival movements from a historicalperspective; it is focused on the Dance House phenomenon, which includesgender and ethnic aspects from a cultural and medical anthropologicalcontext. This book deals with the theory of tradition and culturaltransfer of heritage through pedagogy and counter-culture movements,with an emphasis on the the Wundtian contribution and its Hungariancounterparts. The Dance House phenomenon is presented through anauto-anthropological perspective, including the author’s field workresults.

Mediterraneanist Network (MedNet)

Following the successful MedNet panel Networking, collaboration and intimacy in the Mediterranean during the 13th EASA Biennial Conference in Tallinn, a proposal was submitted to the editors of the journal “Ethnologia Europaea“ for preparing a special issue on new forms of social practices of networking. This proposal was accepted and Jutta Lauth Bacas (coordinator of the EASA MedNet network) and Marion Näser-Lather (University of Marburg) will act as guest editors preparing a special issue with the title “Practices of Resistance and Change in the Mediterranean” to be published in 2017/18.

The paperback edition of the volume Border Encounters: Asymmetry and Proximity at Europe’s Frontiers”, edited by Jutta Lauth Bacas and William Kavanagh, was published by Berghahn Books in March 2016 (ISBN 978-1-78533-219-7; also available as eBook). The volume presents a series of eleven European case studies on how, and to what extent, the border context influences the social relations between people at a political frontier. All of these are set in the context of rapidly evolving European borders, be it in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union or due to the expansion and strengthening of the EU. The collection of case studies has grown out of a MedNet workshop held by William Kavanagh and Jutta Lauth Bacas at the 8th EASA Biennial Conference in Vienna.
http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=BacasBorder

The SC&H Network prepares its fifth Summer Course under the preliminary working title : “Spiritualism and Healing in Organic and Organized Cultures” Risks and Resources in Cultures of Organizations. The Summer Course will be held in Budapest and Nagykrös in late June and early July of 2017.
Last not least the EASA MedNet network had the pleasure to welcome a number of new members in 2015/16, based in Canada, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Spain, U.K., and the U.S.E