“Histories of Latin American Anthropologies: Contemporary Experiments,” June 12-15, 2023, São Paulo & Campinas (Brazil)

The international conference “Histories of Latin American Anthropologies: Contemporary Experiments,” held at the Centro Universitário Maria Antonio (University of São Paulo) and the Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth (University of Campinas) between June 12 and 15, 2023, is dedicated to the history of ethnography and anthropology in several Latin American countries (19th–21st centuries) from a comparative and transatlantic perspective.

In order to compose a diverse and heterogeneous picture of anthropologies as practiced in the south of the continent and in the Caribbean, the conference explores the uses and meanings of the past within the anthropologies practiced today and projected for the future. Contemporary experiments around the histories of Latin American anthropologies can be of various types: experiments with (and against) history; theoretical and methodological experiments; institutional experiments (museographic and museological experiments); experiments with various types of knowledge (academic and non-academic); also with the natural sciences, arts and literature. In this sense, participants are encouraged to present case studies allowing wider reflections on the transits of knowledge and transatlantic flows; materials and materialities; inflections of gender, race and sexuality; new museographic knowledge and shared curatorships. The guiding idea of the conference is to radically play with the idea of experimentation, bringing new topics, new actors and their problematics to the fore as a reflection of risky and daring experiments. By listening to them and thinking with them, alternative tools and unexpected memories and histories of anthropology may emerge. The central goal of this meeting is thus to review – and play with – the diverse anthropologies developed in Latin America, and to consider their potential for a broader reflection on anthropological knowledge and its reconfigurations.

This conference is organized by Fernanda Arêas Peixoto (USP), Christiano Tambascia (Unicamp), Gustavo Rossi (Unicamp), Stefania Capone (CNRS, EHESS, Césor), Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima (PPGAS – Museu Nacional, UFRJ) within the HITAL International Research Network (IRN), made up of researchers from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, France and Portugal, in collaboration with BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology. The conference program is now accessible online.