{"word_count": 496, "character_count": 3680}
This conference is aimed at exploring new ways of approaching the  tensional and intimate connections between &#8216;things&#8217; and &#8216;spirits&#8217; across  distinct practices and epistemologies. In recent decades, the theme of  materiality has gained wider currency and centrality in social sciences  and anthropological theory. A growing number of scholars in the  anthropology of religion, material culture studies, and history and  sociology of science and technology have been reexamining the partition  between humans, material objects, and immaterial entities, along with  the ideas of agency, evidence, and materiality itself. A double shift  towards (i) a radically generalized view of agency and (ii) the  ontological complexity of things, spirits, and humans is cutting across  distinct approaches in the anthropology of religion, science studies,  and material culture studies. However, although they seem to share a  novel attention to the tropes of materiality and agency, they do not  necessarily agree with the angles from which these issues should be  analyzed. Moreover, the extent to which the themes of immateriality and  spirituality should be accorded analytical weight is unequally present  throughout these approaches. For example, if it seems clear that  &#8220;spirits&#8221; must have a place in the study of religion it is less obvious  how the study of immaterialities would look like in the analysis of  scientific and technological artefacts. By bringing these scholarly approaches  into closer dialogue, the conference Things and Spirits: New Approaches  to Materiality and Immateriality aims at developing new perspectives and  finding common ground in the history and ethnography of things,  spirits, and their relations to humans. It will provide a timely  opportunity for scholars to explore further the synergies between  ethnographical and historical methodologies in the analysis of  materiality and immateriality. In addition, it expects to offer students  of religion, material culture, and science a privileged occasion for  mutual engagement and theoretical and methodological cross-fertilizing.  We will take as a point of departure that what counts as &#8220;things&#8221; and  &#8220;materiality&#8221;, what counts as &#8220;spirits&#8221; and &#8220;immateriality&#8221;, and, still,  what counts as &#8220;agents&#8221; are issues to be determined empirically. As  such, we invite anthropologists, historians, and students of science,  technology, and material culture to analytically address the multiple  arrangements of things and spirits by engaging with empirical material.SUGGESTED TOPICSSubmissions of papers are encouraged  that address one or more of the following topics:    Materiality and immateriality in  religious and scientific theories of evidence;    Plurality of notions and modes of  agency across distinct scientific and non-scientific theories and  practices;    Boundaries between material and  immaterial;    &#8220;Things&#8221;, &#8220;spirits&#8221; and the dynamics  of colonial encounters;    Iconoclast and iconophile projects of  religion building, destruction, or conversion;    Materiality and immateriality of  power;    Machines, material technologies and  their connections to the immaterial.Venue: Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. Date: 15,  16 and 17 September 2010CALL FOR PAPERS NOW OPEN. DEADLINE: 17  May 2010Please submit a 500 words abstract and a  brief bio by email to: Ricardo  Roque and Jo&#227;o  Vasconcelos.Ricardo Roque Instituto de Ciencias Sociais Universidade de Lisboa Av. Prof. Anibal Bettencourt, 9 1600-189 PORTUGALEmail: ricardo.roque@ics.ul.pt