Call for proposals: Workshop on walking and activism, SfAA Annual Meeting

[Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston]

Please see the following call for proposals for a workshop at the 
Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC 
(March 29-April 2, 2016):

Anthropologists and scholars in cognate disciplines have addressed 
walking as a fertile method of ethnographic inquiry (Pink 2008, Guano 
2003); a mode of learning and an embodied, place-specific way of 
engaging with issues and communities (Vergunst 2008); a means of 
subverting unequal relations of power, including those between 
researchers and interlocutors (Kusenbach 2003, Irving 2011); as well as 
a strategy of control, surveillance, and dominance (Shaw 2013). Walking 
tours in various forms, including audio itineraries and mapping 
exercises, have been used by individuals and groups to reframe spaces 
and histories. As a performative form of constructing and representing 
identities and claims to the world, walking has also been a powerful 
tool for activism, dissent, and community engagement of various kinds. 
The Mothers circling Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires during the 
dictatorship in Argentina, a group of Cree youth from Whapmagoostui, 
Quebec, snowshoeing 1, 600 kilometres to Parliament Hill in support of 
the /Idle No More/ movement, and guided city walks in Milan, Italy, by 
disadvantaged residents are some of many examples.

For this workshop, we are looking for participants interested in 
exploring walking as a complex, contradictory, and contested social 
practice – a form of activism, a tool for resistance, a way of 
constructing social and environmental justice, but also a hegemonic 
and/or discriminatory force. The questions we invite you to consider 
include: what are some potentials and pitfalls of walking as a form of 
social commentary? How has walking been used by individuals and groups 
to counter oppression and suggest alternatives?  How, on the opposite, 
have various walks and itineraries been used to exclude people and 
perpetuate inequalities? How can ethnographers work collaboratively with 
groups and communities involved in walking projects and practices that 
support social justice? The workshop will include a discussion of 
examples as well as an experiential component in which we will share 
strategies for organizing, initiating, and/or following walking projects.

If you are interested in participating, please send us a 200 word 
abstract before October 10, which includes

- a proposal for a 10 minute presentation on walking and activism and/or 
community projects. Examples discussed can range from small everyday 
itineraries to large-scale rallies and projects, and from analyses of 
events and initiatives to ethnographic insights and research experiences.

- a description of a 15 minutes walking activity or exercise you can 
facilitate with all the attendees of the workshop (exercises can take 
place in or outside of a classroom). All participants will be asked to 
lead an activity as well as participate in the one of others.

Please send the abstracts to Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston at 
mkazubow at yorku.ca <mailto:mkazubow at yorku.ca> or to Cristina Moretti at 
crimoretti at gmail.com <mailto:crimoretti at gmail.com>



-- 
Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston
Associate Professor, Department of Theatre
Graduate Program in Theatre & Performance Studies
Graduate Program in Social Anthropology
York University
312 Centre for Film and Theatre (CFT)
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada

T: 416-736-2100 x. 22257
E: mkazubow at yorku.ca
http://imaginativeethnography.org

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