The 12th international SIEF congress will take place in Zagreb, 21-25 June 2015. We expect over 400 anthropologists, ethnologists, folklorists and others interested in European culture for four exciting days of keynotes, parallel panels, book exhibit and a congress banquet. The theme of the conference is: Utopias, Realities, Heritages. Ethnographies for the 21st century.

The public fascination with heritage in recent years might be understood in the context of this history of temporal imaginations: burying various visions of the future, we excavate multiple visions of the past. Indeed, heritage also presupposes a projected future for which we must safeguard it, populated by future generations who we imagine will care. In between utopia and heritage are day-to-day realities, the ordinary and the routine: the practices and expressions that ethnologists have long taken as their principal objects. It is in this most mundane of realities that people realize their utopian visions and heritage imaginaries, motivating their action and interpreting their existence in the context of imaginary pasts and futures.

The theme brings into focus discourses and practices of utopia and heritage, from times past and present, and the congress asks prospective participants: How do utopian visions, realities, and heritages materialize? Where do they circulate? How are they narrated, envisioned and practiced? What are some utopian signifiers and signifieds: human solidarity, national sovereignty, quality of life, preservation of culture and ecosystems, sustainable development, peace, love and understanding? What place do these have in the heritage imagination? And how do heritage and utopia inform our understanding of daily realities here and now?

The congress offers a critical platform for debating contemporary and historical imaginaries of utopias, realities, and heritages. Participants are encouraged to frame the debate with keywords from ethnological and folkloristic inquiry, such as circulation, performance, community, genre, visual culture, material culture, digital culture, migration, home, memory, morality, gender, religiosity, discipline, hegemony, governmentality, ethnicity, corporeality, and so on and so forth.

CALL FOR PANELS

Proposals must consist of:

 - a panel title

- name and email addresses of panel convenor or convenors

- a short abstract of <300 characters

- long abstract of <250 words

The proposal may also include the names of any chairs or discussants, although these can be added subsequently using the login environment - please use the convention of Firstname Lastname (Institution). If these roles are to be taken by convenors, then please do not enter your own names there - as it's implicit that this will be the case where other names are not listed.

If you are proposing a workshop and not a panel (see below), please state this in brackets at the end of the panel title field.

Proposals must be made via the online form - when that becomes available. In the meantime *please email the information above to congress(AT)siefhome.org a href="http://siefhome.org/" target="_blank">http://siefhome.org>.

The call for panels closes on 9th November.

Decisions over the panel proposals will be made by the Scientific committee and these will be communicated to all proposing convenors by mid-November.

Any queries please email *congress(at)siefhome.org a href="http://siefhome.org/" target="_blank">http://siefhome.org>