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January 4th – 9th 2018, Villarrica, Chile
LASI Summer School 2018 sets its focus on DIFFERENCE as a socio-political phenomenon and concept of theoretical inquiry. Difference marks the limits of belonging to all kinds of collectivities and it is a key element in our understanding of social life. The social production of difference is a limiting and boundary-making practice that works both as a matter of defining external borders, for example between nation-states, and as a way of policing internal boundaries, for example based upon race, political ideologies, class and gender, sexualities, and disabilities. While difference frequently works to define hierarchies, inequalities, and power asymmetries, it is also articulated as part of identity politics. Difference is thus also always a political, social, cultural and moral category that can be scrutinized and turned into the object of debate. The emergence of new socio-political actors and novel social categories, territories, and forms of life may also, depending upon one’s perspective, contain a threat to social order or a promise of social transformation.
LASI Summer School 2018 asks how difference is produced in specific sociocultural and environmental settings and what effects it may have on the relationships and forms of coexistence among different social and cultural groups, among species and in intimate relations. Who or what constitutes otherness in contemporary society and under which circumstances is the other deemed problematic, as a threat to social order or as an unworthy form of life? How is difference approached in social policy and how do people engage these practices? How is otherness from within experienced by those positioned as being “neither nor” or in a position of partial belonging? How do we recognize difference and dismantle the power asymmetries based on difference?
These are questions that have guided much of social science within the field of subaltern and postcolonial studies, and these inquiries remain key in Latin American contexts where issues of racism, machismo and misogyny, and internal colonialism continue to be an deterrent factor in everyday sociality and culture, as well as in people’s possibilities for socio-economic mobility. As it has been the case in recent years, the production of difference can also be approached from frameworks of socio-environmental and ecological studies; within the field of science and technologies studies; or from the perspectives of indigenous cosmologies, where the divide between the human and non-human realm might imply understandings of life and self that radically differ from Western cosmologies, queer theory, etc.
LASI – Summer School 2017 took place between January 4th – 9th, 2017. LASI 2017 was located in San Pedro de Atacama in Northern Chile. LASI 2017 was dedicated to the concept of Emergent Democracies – New Forms of Coexistence.
LASI Summer School 2018 takes place in Villarrica in the Araucanía, the heartland of the encounter between the Mapuche people, colonos of European descent, and the Chilean state. With the backdrop of a region that is known as the focal point of ongoing conflictive relations between these actors, this year’s Summer School invites faculty and students to reflect on and address issues of difference. We invite national and international graduate students to come together for a week of specialist instruction from internationally renowned scholars to think through these issues in an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective that offers insight into the particularities of the production of difference, discrimination, and transformative potential in this specific context but with an explicit view to Latin American and global comparisons.
LASI – Summer School is organized around plenary lectures and debates; intensive workshops that focus on specific issues and theories with eight to twelve students in each group; and joint fieldtrips. Each workshop is supervised by two tutors, one local and one international scholar. Students receive a syllabus, texts, and assignments in advance.
The official language of LASI is English and participants should be able to read texts and engage in presentations and discussions in this language. However, given the Spanish speaking context in which LASI is located, English speaking students should be prepared for a setting where Spanish is the mother tongue of a significant part of the participants and local interlocutors. Local instructors and some of the international instructors speak and/or understand both languages, and the instructors will make an effort to generate an inclusive environment for all students and facilitate a fruitful communication.
While the specialized workshops will be held in English some of the afternoon activities with local interlocutors will be in Spanish and basic knowledge of Spanish is therefore preferable.
Application Process:
LASI – summer school invite graduate students from social sciences and humanities to apply.
Fee: $45O USD. This fee includes all the described academic activities and the supplies needed; Transport (by air) from Santiago to Villarrica; housing and most meals during the stay in Villarrica. Students coming from outside Santiago or Chile must arrange for transport to Santiago de Chile themselves.
Applications must be submitted by October 10th 2017 at the latest through the online application system. The selected participants will be notified by October 26th 2017 onwards.
