Preliminary Program 61St Annual Meeting
Preliminary Program 61st Annual Meeting Energies: Power, Creativity and Afro-Futures November 29 – December 1, 2018 Atlanta, GA Program Committee Chairs: Nana Akua Anyidoho, University of Ghana Mark Auslander, Michigan State University Local Arrangements Committee Chairs: Jennie Burnet, Georgia State University Harcourt Fuller, Georgia State University Pamela Scully, Emory University Program Theme The theme of this year’s Annual Meeting is “Energies: Power, Creativity and Afro-Futures.” The theme statement reads as follows: For the annual meeting of the ASA in Atlanta (2018), we reflect on ‘energy’—its production, extraction, distribution and exchange—as a heuristic to understand Africa’s past and to imagine its futures. Energy has rich literal and metaphorical resonances in reference to extractive and entrepreneurial economic activities; the production of knowledge; human mobility and labor; performance, ritual and spirituality; and crime and social unrest. We call on scholars to explore the theme of energy, in both material and symbolic terms, and to reconceptualize dynamic fields of action in the economy, politics, culture, arts, and environment—across time and space, within the African continent and across its diasporas. Regional and trans-national energy industries and other extractive undertakings have profoundly refashioned modern African landscapes. Petro-chemical industries, often allied with military and national security formations, have at times deepened economic inequality, posed threats to civil society and democratic institutions, and challenged environmental and human ecologies. At other moments, hydrocarbon-based systems have stimulated sociopolitical movements, catalyzed local entrepreneurship and even artistic creativity. The notion of energy is also salient to historical explorations of contestations over human energies in African societies.
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