ANTHEM

Please see the following announcement for the Comparative Relativism colloquium to be held at the IT-University of Copenhagen on 3-4 September 2009. Key note speakers include Barbara Herrnstein Smith (Brown University & Duke University), Isabelle Stengers (The Free University of Brussels), Marilyn Strathern (Cambridge University) and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (Museo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro). Pre-register here (max. 100  participants on first-come, first serve basis). PhD students can also sign up for short intensive discussion sessions with one of the keynote speakers.

This workshop puts in conjunction the two unlikely terms “comparison” and “relativism.” On the one hand, comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of different contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences. Relativism, on the other hand, often involves the assumption that contexts exhibit radically different, incomparable or incommensurable traits. Thus comparative studies are required to treat their subjects alike, by providing general and external measures by which can be established what is shared and not between cultures or practices. Relativism, however, indicates the limits of this stance, by suggesting that the observation of the similar and the different depends on an outside position from which comparison can be made. And, of course, relativism is sceptical of the possibility to establish such an outside position. (more…)