International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) in Poznań, “World Solidarities”
Organized by: Faculty of Anthropology and Cultural Studies
27-31 August 2019
The 2019 IUAES Congress was hosted by the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland (AMU).
The organising institutions were the IUAES, the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at AMU, and the Polish Ethnological Society (PES). It was chaired by Michal Buchowski, the President of the PES, and the Head of the Department in Poznan. Almost seven hundred participants from more than sixty countries engaged in hundreds of events: plenary session, roundtables, sessions, poster sessions, exhibitions, audiovisual sessions and book exhibitions. City walks, excursions and concerts were organised.
A number of non-governmental organisations and activists, who act towards building world solidarities were invited. The congress was held as eco-friendly event. Chris Hann form Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Alice Waterston form City University of New York delivered key-note lectures.
The Congress participants made comprehensive insights into human solidarities that emerge at local and global levels of social life. These solidarities have to stretched out to other species and ecosystems.
Notions of compassion, commonality and solidarity are particularly important in the period when global warming and social inequalities force whole populations to migrate and cause a rise in the exclusionist, xenophobic ideologies.
Notion of the collective was broadened by linking social inequalities and ecology. Participants hoped to raise consciousness, define the problems and the understand new meanings of a collective good, resilience, wellbeing, care and exchange.
By bringing these issues to the table and by active engagement anthropologist hoped to promote solidarities against hostilities and mobilize social actors in an effort to make our world a better place to live.