Fundamentalisms and Their Alternatives:
Anthropological Responses and Responsibilities

Fundamentalism is a striving for a return and strict adherence to founding principles in the midst of social change. Its adherents develop a sense of embattled and separate identity in response to what they see as a surrender or loss of the ‘fundamentals’—the true, historically accurate doctrines of their faith (whether religious, economic, political or disciplinary)—in the context of changes in their world. It is a relationship of passionate belief and schism between people who have shared a social world and whose relationship is transformed by changes in that world. In this sense it is most directly associated with followers of a religion who feel a sense of loss and alienation from their mainstream religion.

This Conference provides a forum for anthropologists to explore the phenomenon of fundamentalism in the contemporary world. This involves understanding the social and cultural characteristics of fundamentalism, as well as the responses and alternatives it engenders. While the term has its origin in relation to religion, it can cover an economic, political or disciplinary sense of loss and the need to return to the fundamentals.

The conference explores the relationship of anthropology to the institutions, groups and individuals that are transforming the religions, politics, economics, and environments of the contemporary world. We ask participants to examine whether anthropology plays a critical or a complicit role in, to name just three examples, current debate about global free-trade, the US-led war against terrorism, or the implementation of policies designed to protect the environment. If anthropology’s characteristic focus is the fine-grained detail of daily life, what do we actually know about people’s experience of these ongoing global transformations?

We also ask participants to question why fundamentalism has become one of the favoured analytical categories through which we are frequently urged to understand recent social change and historical events. What scope or hope is there for alternative ways of thinking about our shared predicaments of culture? Simply put, can anthropology survive in a fundamentalist world that denies cultural difference, arguably the lifeblood of our discipline?

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Welcome to the AAS Conference 2005 website. Registration and session details are now available.

Important Dates

13 May - Deadline for session proposals
12 August - Deadline for proposals for papers to session conveners
19 August - Session programmes sent to conference organisers
2 September - Announcement of Conference final program
27 - 30 September - The Conference