Alexa Färber (Wien): Let's take Promises / Looseness serious. Anthropology Beyond and Despite Future 

Caption

Futures in/of Anthropology. Perspectives of a Public and Engaged Anthropology. Intro by Regina Römhild. Recorded 06.07.2021

As a basically relational concept the promise articulates a mode of futurity that is surprisingly loose (Abram/Weszkalnys 2013): Not only that promises made in the present are often not kept; the attention given to them is anything but permanently intense. In this talk I will first unfold this looseness of promisses and its respective analytical value for studying the future made present. My thoughts are mainly based on empirical work in and about „cities“ and conceptual work derived from it that grasps the different (temporal) modes of how promises order the social, such as promissory assemblage (Färber 2019, 2020) and standby (Kemmer/Kühn/Otto/Weber 2021). From there I will discuss the promises articulated by Public and Engaged Anthropology and the expectations attached to it. The notion of compromise may become of some analytical value here.

References:

https://www.talkingphotobooks.net/standingbykinshasa
http://www.ephemerajournal.org
https://wexarts.org/film-video/in-the-air
https://soundcloud.com/kona049/10-alice-deejay-better-off
https://www.volkskundemuseum.at/makingclimatepublic_08052021

- Simone Abram/Gisa Weszkalnys (eds.) (2013): Elusive Promises. Planning in the Contemporary World. New York.
- Nikhil Anand/Akhil Gupta/Hannah Appel (eds.) (2018): The promise of infrastructure. Durham.

- Lauren Berlant (2016). The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34(3): 393-419.
- Lauren Berlant (2007): ‘Nearly utopian, nearly normal: Post-fordist affect in La Promesse and Rosetta,’ Public Culture, 19:2, 273-30

- Lauren Berlant (2011): Cruel Optimism, Durham: Duke University Press.

- Filip de Boeck/Sammy Baloji (2016): Suturing the City. Living Together in
Kongo’s Urban Worlds. London.

- Alexa Färber (2019): How does ANT help us to rethink the city and its
promises?“ In: Anders Blok / Ignacio Farías / Celia Roberts. eds.. The Routledge Companion to Actor-network Theory. London: Routledge. 264-272.

- Alexa Färber (2020): Gegen UnGleichzeitigkeit? Das Versprechen als alltagskulturelle Vergegenwärtigung von (urbanen) Zukünften. In: R. D. Eggel et al (Hg.) Planen. Hoffen. Fürchten. Zur Gegenwart der Zukunft im Alltag. Münster: Waxmann Verlag 2020, 25-41.

- Alexa Färber (2021): The city as a setting for collaboration? Tracking the multiple scales of urban promises. In: M. Ege/J. Moser (eds.): Urban Ethnics. Conflicts over the good and proper life in cities. London: Routledge, 47-62.

- Laura Kemmer (2020): Free Riding Rio: Protest, Public Transport and the Politics of a Footboard. In: City & Society 32/1, 157-181.

- Laura Kemmer/AbdouMaliq Simone (2021): Standing by the Promise: Acts of Anticipation in Rio and Jakarta. In: Environment and Planning D, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775820982997

- Annika Kühn, Laura Kemmer, Birke Otto, Vanessa Weber (eds.) (2021): http://www.ephemerajournal.org/forthcoming-contributions

- Elizabeth A. Povinelli (2011): Economies of Abandonment. Social Belonging and Endurance in late Liberalism. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

- Elizabeth Povinelli & Clara Bessijelle Johansson (2018): Stubborn. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/95/228045/stubborn/

- Gisa Weszkalnys (2013): Berlin, Alexanderplatz. Transforming Place in a Unified Germany. New York.