We live in upheavals– ongoing and expected, planned and unforeseen. In Norway and around the world, people's lives are affected by landscape changes and climate change, war and conflict, artificial intelligence and new technology, energy transition and economic collapse. These are life upheavals,  social upheavals, changes in surroundings and in the basis of lifestyle, and often several upheavals occur in complex interactions. Many also live in expectation, hope or fear, with uncertainty as a framework for imagining life and the future. In this year's conference, we want to explore anthropology's many contributions to understanding a contemporary era characterized by upheaval.

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Upheavals are all about time. They can beabrupt and they can be slow. Upheavals can happen quickly, but they can also be the culmination of long gradual processes. They may look like events, but at the same time can trigger cascades with ripple effects that extend over a long period of time. Many live with the consequences and aftermath of past upheavals, for example from catastrophic cataclysms such as colonialism. And many live in the long shadow of the future, where living conditions and ways of life can feel like they are on the brink of something new and unknown. In upheavals, the new and the persistent are brought to the fore. They can allow us to direct our focus towards contemporary convoluted temporalities. 

 

Upheavals are aboutconnections and breaks. They rarely happen separately and in isolation, but rather as unpredictable effects that entangle themselves through systems and networks. Upheavals can break connections – between people, between people and place and between people and other species – and they can be impulses for new links and new social formations. In the ambiguous space of upheavals, both can occurcommunity and division. Here differences can come to light, but here people can also come together in difficult situations, create new alliances and new ways of sharing benefits and burdens. As shared historical moments, upheavals extend from the global to the bodily. Upheavals are at the same time close and personal and collective and shared. 

 

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We invite anthropologists from all sectors, including students, to submit contributions inspired by questions that arise around upheaval and what characterizes a world in upheaval. We accept proposals both for openworking groups and working groups that already have participants.

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