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Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society 2019
together with Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki and the Finnish Literature Society
On Time
Helsinki, August 28–30, 2019
Conference timetable
Note that panels take place in three different locations within walking distance from each other (House of Sciences and Letters, the Finnish Literature Society, and Unioninkatu 35). See exact locations of different panels here.
Wednesday Aug 28th
14.00 Registration opens at Unioninkatu 40
15.00-16.35 Opening film: The Sound of Bells (Unioninkatu 37)
17.00-19.00 Westermarck-lecture: Professor Laura Bear (Unionikatu 40)
Thursday Aug 29th
9.00 Registration and coffee at Unioninkatu 35
10.00 Opening remarks at Unioninkatu 35
10.15 Keynote lecture: Professor Ghassan Hage (Unioninkatu 35)
12.00 Lunch
13.30-15.30 Panels and film program
15.30 Coffee break
15.45-17.45 Panels and film program
19-20 Mayor’s reception at the City Hall (Pohjoisesplanadi 11–13, advance registration required)
Friday Aug 30th
9.00-10.00 Coffee
10.00-12.00 Panels and film program
12.00 Lunch
13.30-15.30 Panels and film program
15.30 Coffee
15.45-17.45 Panels and film program
17.45 Book launch: Dwelling in Political Landscapes: Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives (House of Sciences and Letters, 2nd floor)
20.00 Dinner: Hima & Sali (Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 C)
Saturday Aug 31st
15.00-19.00 Sauna at Writer’s House Villa Kivi (Linnunlauluntie 7)
Keynote abstract
The Difficult Temporality of Diasporic Nostalgia
Ghassan Hage
That notions of time are closely entangled with notions of space is something taken for granted by most anthropologists. While in modern European conceptions of nostalgia time-centred notions, such as ‘remembering the past’ and ‘the irreversibility of time’, have been central, it is always assumed that notions of space and place are nonetheless lurking there, even when not explicitly mentioned. The past we remember is always a past that happened ‘somewhere’. While migrant nostalgia is also a similar yearning for another time-space, it nonetheless involves a greater foregrounding of place. That is, what is explicitly yearned for is often another place (even if, here also, this place is entangled with time). But this raises difficult philosophical and ethnographic questions: is the irreversibility of place even when it is a place-in-time the same as the irreversibility of time? And, relatedly, is time-space entanglement a culture free concept as philosophy treats it, or is it something that needs to be ethnographically analysed as it takes different forms in different cultural settings?