BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//EuroSEAS 2024//EN X-WR-CALNAME:EuroSEAS 2024 BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Amsterdam X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/Amsterdam BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 DTSTART:19700329T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 DTSTART:19701025T030000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20241121T152500 UID:euroseas-2024-are-there-witches-in-southeast-asia-1 SUMMARY:Are there ‘Witches’ in Southeast Asia? (1) LOCATION:REC A1.04 DESCRIPTION:Although ‘witchcraft’ is an elusive term, it played an importan t role as an analytic concept in the disciplinary history of modern anthrop ology. Seminal publications that are now seen as ‘classics’ of the discipli ne address magic and witchcraft more specifically. Most of these ‘classics’ deal with African societies. This contributed essentially to the close ass ociation that exists between the region ‘Africa’ and the field ‘witchcraft’ in anthropological discourses. While there were always contributions from Southeast Asia that address practices loosely classifiable under the label ‘witchcraft’, there are only a few volumes that look at these phenomena fro m a comparative Southeast Asian perspective (Watson and Ellen 1993). The co ntemporary scholarship explicitly addressing witchcraft in the region – wit h a few remarkable exceptions (Bubandt 2014, Siegel 2006) – is largely dorm ant. Simultaneously, scholars document the continuing and growing relevance of witchcraft-related practices in the postmodern and postcolonial states of Southeast Asia (Jackson 2022).\n\nWorking closely together for the past two years at Heidelberg University’s Institute of Anthropology, the organiz ers recognized the strong commonalities that exist between witchcraft-relat ed ideas and practices in Bali and Northeastern Thailand. They simultaneous ly observe that these similarities are rarely addressed in anthropological texts, which tend to deal with witchcraft and related practices in insular or mainland societies more or less exclusively (Jackson and Baumann 2022). This is where the organizers see the potentials of an area studies approach to witchcraft in Southeast Asia. Area studies not only offer the advantage of bringing regional experts from various disciplinary backgrounds to the conversation, but the area concept as such offers a comparative perspective that crosses the insular/mainland divide that anthropological approaches o ften lack due to their focus on specific localities. While the organizers e xplicitly acknowledge the need to pay attention to this localization of kno wledge in order to understand witchcraft-related phenomena, they neverthele ss think that a comparative perspective and an exchange between regional ex pertise from insular and mainland Southeast Asia will open up new vantage p oints to understand localized practices. We see this laboratory as a first step in bringing together regional experts who have worked on witchcraft-re lated practices in the past to discuss potential fields for cooperation in the future that bridges the insular/mainland divide. The anthropology of wi tchcraft in Southeast Asia may greatly benefit from a transdisciplinary are a studies dialogue in laboratory form to explore ways of how to move collab orative research in this fascinating field into a more productive future. T he central question that will guide this laboratory is the question whether there are ‘witches’ in Southeast Asia or whether the application of the te rms ‘witch’ and witchcraft in Southeast Asian contexts are category mistake s in Ryle’s sense.\n\nThis laboratory will establish a dialogue between sch olars of religion, politics, anthropology, history, sociology and art who r esearch contrasting domains, fields and dynamics of social power and religi osity in contemporary Southeast Asia. By thinking comparatively both within local settings and across the entire region, the laboratory seeks to devel op a more robust, critical and nuanced conceptual and analytic vocabulary t hrough which to advance the comparative study of witchcraft and related soc ial phenomena in Southeast Asia. URL:https://euroseas2024.org/panels/are-there-witches-in-southeast-asia DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240725T090000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240725T103000 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20241121T152500 UID:euroseas-2024-are-there-witches-in-southeast-asia-2 SUMMARY:Are there ‘Witches’ in Southeast Asia? (2) LOCATION:REC A1.04 DESCRIPTION:Although ‘witchcraft’ is an elusive term, it played an importan t role as an analytic concept in the disciplinary history of modern anthrop ology. Seminal publications that are now seen as ‘classics’ of the discipli ne address magic and witchcraft more specifically. Most of these ‘classics’ deal with African societies. This contributed essentially to the close ass ociation that exists between the region ‘Africa’ and the field ‘witchcraft’ in anthropological discourses. While there were always contributions from Southeast Asia that address practices loosely classifiable under the label ‘witchcraft’, there are only a few volumes that look at these phenomena fro m a comparative Southeast Asian perspective (Watson and Ellen 1993). The co ntemporary scholarship explicitly addressing witchcraft in the region – wit h a few remarkable exceptions (Bubandt 2014, Siegel 2006) – is largely dorm ant. Simultaneously, scholars document the continuing and growing relevance of witchcraft-related practices in the postmodern and postcolonial states of Southeast Asia (Jackson 2022).\n\nWorking closely together for the past two years at Heidelberg University’s Institute of Anthropology, the organiz ers recognized the strong commonalities that exist between witchcraft-relat ed ideas and practices in Bali and Northeastern Thailand. They simultaneous ly observe that these similarities are rarely addressed in anthropological texts, which tend to deal with witchcraft and related practices in insular or mainland societies more or less exclusively (Jackson and Baumann 2022). This is where the organizers see the potentials of an area studies approach to witchcraft in Southeast Asia. Area studies not only offer the advantage of bringing regional experts from various disciplinary backgrounds to the conversation, but the area concept as such offers a comparative perspective that crosses the insular/mainland divide that anthropological approaches o ften lack due to their focus on specific localities. While the organizers e xplicitly acknowledge the need to pay attention to this localization of kno wledge in order to understand witchcraft-related phenomena, they neverthele ss think that a comparative perspective and an exchange between regional ex pertise from insular and mainland Southeast Asia will open up new vantage p oints to understand localized practices. We see this laboratory as a first step in bringing together regional experts who have worked on witchcraft-re lated practices in the past to discuss potential fields for cooperation in the future that bridges the insular/mainland divide. The anthropology of wi tchcraft in Southeast Asia may greatly benefit from a transdisciplinary are a studies dialogue in laboratory form to explore ways of how to move collab orative research in this fascinating field into a more productive future. T he central question that will guide this laboratory is the question whether there are ‘witches’ in Southeast Asia or whether the application of the te rms ‘witch’ and witchcraft in Southeast Asian contexts are category mistake s in Ryle’s sense.\n\nThis laboratory will establish a dialogue between sch olars of religion, politics, anthropology, history, sociology and art who r esearch contrasting domains, fields and dynamics of social power and religi osity in contemporary Southeast Asia. By thinking comparatively both within local settings and across the entire region, the laboratory seeks to devel op a more robust, critical and nuanced conceptual and analytic vocabulary t hrough which to advance the comparative study of witchcraft and related soc ial phenomena in Southeast Asia. URL:https://euroseas2024.org/panels/are-there-witches-in-southeast-asia DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240725T110000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20240725T123000 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR