The workshop "Migrations, traditions and Modernities - Comparing Ethnographies" will take place at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, on 26 and 27 October 2009, and it will include the following keynotes among others: Fillipo Osella (University of Sussex), Joan D'Alisera (University of Arkansas) and Frank Pieke (University of Oxford). Speakers will have up to 20 minutes for presentation followed by an open discussion.

Anthropology and modernity are old travel companions. Since the beginning of the discipline, anthropologists have been confronted with the several modes people adapt to, or resist, the worlds produced by the adoption of lifestyles called "modernity" in the west.

In the last twenty years, this ‘modernizing' concern has become entangled with debates around cultural ‘globalization', ‘authenticity' and ‘development'. Along with this enlargement of scope came a new problematic not so much addressed at knowing how societies modernize, but rather how they understand and appropriate ‘modernity'. In whatever form it appears, the ‘indigenization' of modernity produces a historical self-awareness that is often reflected in the question: ‘how can we be modern without losing our sense of ourselves?' The question entails notions of ‘modernity' and ‘tradition', as well as contested images and beliefs regarding how life should ideally be. In whatever case, ‘modern life' appears as a disruption vis-à-vis tradition, more often than not studied by anthropologists along the framework of temporality.

Today, however, it becomes clearer and clearer that this ‘disruption' is produced not only by chronological transformations but also by topographic mobility. Both at the popular level of dreams about migration and at the institutional level do we find the notion that a progressive modernization of economies, domestic units, religion, nations and citizens may be achieved by fostering migration. At the same time, paradoxically, migrations are frequently thought of as a path for international dissemination of ‘traditional' lives, sometimes in order to preserve, valorise and commoditize them. Thus, more that erase it, migrations seem to offer new meanings and contexts to the old dichotomy of ‘traditional' vs. ‘modern'.

In the workshop "Migrations, Traditions and Modernities: Comparing Ethnographies" we want to ethnographically explore the relationship between modernity and migratory phenomena, looking at the actors who create/reproduce discourses and images about modernity and tradition along transnational lines, the channels of diffusion, the politization of these elements, and how they affect local lives in different parts of the world. We look forward to receiving proposals for papers and we hope to cover a wide range of ethnographic situations that should give rise to a very enriching anthropological dialogue.

Organizing committee: José Mapril - jmapril@gmail.com , Ramon Sarró - ramonsarro@gmail.com , Irene Rodrigues - yilianrodrigues@gmail.com