When I looked at the controversy around holding or not holding the World Congress of Anthropology 2023 at the venue of Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS) in the Odisha state of India, I found stranger fictions, which often betrayed the facts. Thus, the venue of the Congress became more important than the factuality of the discipline, opinion of the few masqueraded as many, the same individual abstaining from voting indulged in wanton verbose and took a committed position on a particular side while writing letters and memoranda.
I constructed a fact sheet, which seemed to me like writing ethnography of the present for looking at ourselves, here in this case, anthropologists in India. My presence in this narrative was like an interlocutor who not only participated in the dialogues but also tried to understand the events from an ethnographic standpoint with the aim of writing an interpretative account of the crisis.
The foregoing narrative revealed not only the chronology and succession of events leading to a crisis around the organization of the World Congress 2023 in India but also exposed the attitude of the Indian anthropologists towards the discipline as well as in handling a crisis situation. By and large, the Indian anthropologists have failed to generate real academic debate in the public domain around the anthropology and sociology of factory schools and their relationship with the large-scale displacement and socio-economic deprivation of the Adivasis (Indigenous communities designated as ‘Tribe’ in the governmental and anthropological terminology) caused by mining, deforestation and industrialisation in the context of their Hinduaisation in India. This is a tragic outcome of public anthropology in the country.
This is a very important question and your example demands serious reflection. Unfortunately, the answer to your question is YES, there is an ongoing trend to privilege the venue rather than the conference. Here, in Macau (Macao SAR, Special Administrative Region of China as Hong Kong), there is in the last years a huge investment of the government, the gambling companies, and the main entrepreneurs to attract large scientific conferences. Last year, prior to de pandemic, Macau had the largest GDP per capita in the world fueled by casinos' profits that were 8 times higher than Las Vegas (now, downturned more than 90%). Thus, we had an Asian scholars' conference gathering more than 5000 participants, Latin American conferences, Asian-Latin American-Caribbean conferences, African conferences, etc., all with more than 2000 participants that fuelled the big casinos' venues, hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies. The scientific participation of Macau researchers in these conferences was ridiculous, and their academic and scholarship local impact was zero: none of the 4 universities of Macau offer Asian, Southeast Asian, or Asia-Pacific studies, there are no Latin American or African studies and not even a small research center in these areas. There is, therefore, a huge commofication, commercialization, and industrialization of scientific conferences as a product, touristic or whatever. Are these conferences still mainly scientific and academic? I really doubt...
This is a very important question and your example demands serious reflection. Unfortunately, the answer to your question is YES, there is an ongoing trend to privilege the venue rather than the conference. Here, in Macau (Macao SAR, Special Administrative Region of China as Hong Kong), there is in the last years a huge investment of the government, the gambling companies, and the main entrepreneurs to attract large scientific conferences. Last year, prior to de pandemic, Macau had the largest GDP per capita in the world fueled by casinos' profits that were 8 times higher than Las Vegas (now, downturned more than 90%). Thus, we had an Asian scholars' conference gathering more than 5000 participants, Latin American conferences, Asian-Latin American-Caribbean conferences, African conferences, etc., all with more than 2000 participants that fuelled the big casinos' venues, hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies. The scientific participation of Macau researchers in these conferences was ridiculous, and their academic and scholarship local impact was zero: none of the 4 universities of Macau offer Asian, Southeast Asian, or Asia-Pacific studies, there are no Latin American or African studies and not even a small research center in these areas. There is, therefore, a huge commofication, commercialization, and industrialization of scientific conferences as a product, touristic or whatever. Are these conferences still mainly scientific and academic? I really doubt...
The right location can make or break your event. It’s no wonder that academic venues are the increasingly the first choice, when they offer value added for free.
Choose a venue with purpose -
Why do people attend conferences?
To learn. To meet new people, who share a passion. To hear from the biggest and brightest names in the field. To reach beyond the comfort zone, and push a career forward.
Sounds familiar?
That means the audio-visual setup you need for meetings, presentations and plenary sessions comes as standard, with big screens to help you share your message, and acoustics to help it be heard. Academic venues typically offer a range of distinctive settings: the kind that can really make an event memorable.
Give to something that matters -
Every academic venue will tell you about the big names: the Nobel Prize winners, the sporting heroes and the cultural greats. But a university is a living community. Students come here to live, learn and grow. When you book an academic venue, you’re not handing money to a faceless corporation. You’re contributing to the future of thousands of curious minds.
Operational Convenience -
Though the theme is important, the location and venue selected matters a lot. There a many issues: like the mode of operation should be convenient for the organizers. Good support system both academic and technical should the readily available.
I agree with Ivo Carneiro de Sousa that scientific conferences are becoming commercialized with non-academic interests. The main objective of academic conferences is to learn by meeting experts as rightly pointed out by Rashmi Pramanik. Ironically, more importance is given to the venue inasmuch as White House becomes more important than what is discussed there! Thanks for your succinct example Uchendu Eugene Chigbu! This has exactly happened in the case narrated in my Frontier paper attached. I had an interesting conversation with a senior professor in Anthropology in India on this specific case, which I attach for your reading. The exchange revealed the scenario in the case of Indian anthropology!
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