What role do edges, borders, margins, and peripheries play in shaping social and material worlds? What does it mean to do anthropology in a world where old models of cores and peripheries have been broken apart? How can peripheral anthropologies contribute to the unsettling of the discipline? In asking these questions, the 2025 ASAA/NZ conference aims to foment conversations around the sites, spaces, actors, and practices taking shape on the periphery to understand how they are actively making and remaking the contemporary world. 

Anthropologists have long considered “remote and edgy” (Harms et al. 2014) places fertile for knowledge production, but we increasingly understand these edges as critical to the making of social, economic, and political orders. This mirrors the intensifying attention that boundaries attract from state and non-state actors, as evidenced by the fortification of many national and regional boundaries. It also reflects tensions in many urban peripheries, as migrants, private enterprise, and rural citizens struggle over social and physical space. From climate refugees in the Pacific to digital diasporas, from special economic zones to informal economies, edges, borders, margins, and peripheries emerge as key sites for understanding contemporary transformations. 

Working from the antipodean perspective of Aotearoa New Zealand, we see the periphery as a space of active unsettling that has always been fertile for anthropological thinking. “Edges, Borders, Margins, and Peripheries” also asks: How do disciplinary traditions forged on the edges of empire help push anthropological research in new directions, and where might our edgy locations challenge anthropology to go next?

We encourage submissions of abstracts of no more than 250 words for individual papers, panels, and group sessions that engage with our theme; however, unrelated submissions are also welcome.

In addition to standard paper presentation panels and sessions, we also would like to encourage a range of innovative modalities such as:

• Music, film, and multimedia

• Talanoa, tok stori

• Dialogic, conversational, or interview sessions

• Poetry, ethnographic fiction

• Games and role-playing

• Multisensory, embodied, and practical engagements

• Art and sculpture

Panel organisers: Fiona McCormack and Bronwyn Isaacs

Chair: Caroline E. Schuster

In his 1935 essay systematising the principles of a new and alarming illiberal trend in political and economic organisation, Willhelm Röpke grimly observed that fascist economics tend towards “loquacious vagueness which irritates the admirer of lucidity in style and thought as much as it seems to attract the masses. We are bewildered by an atmosphere of lyrical unreality and of terminological futility” (1935: 86). And yet through the bluster and ambiguity emerges a “heavily monopolistic-interventionist society adorned by terminological and phraseological ornaments,” one where the ‘socialisation of losses’ is extreme and the capitalist institution of bankruptcy is, to some extent, replaced by concentration camps and revenge politics (91). From various points of view across the globe, we might be pardoned for feeling a sense of déjà vu in 2025. While mainstream economists might self-sooth through its TACO principle (Trump Always Chickens Out), the chaotic, acquisitive, and destructive force of the rapid and often contradictory politico-economic shifts means that, even if quickly abandoned, the interventionism has been successful in sewing turmoil and confusion. Locally, the pattern of interventionist monopolies and phraseological ornament feel familiar. In New Zealand, the current right wing coalition government’s removal of treaty partnerships in governance, slashing of research funding outside of “STEM”, and introduction of regulatory bills of ‘principle’s’ bound in circular logics, suggests that a similar playbook is in operation.  Through it all, the powerful classes are left intact, and indeed, profit.

This panel seeks anthropological perspectives on the vast concentration of wealth enabled by novel configurations of monopolistic and interventionist economies, especially as these are amplified by economic chaos. We suggest that these patterns offer a window onto novel modes of extractivism, particularly at the margins. While the new fascist economics may indeed extend older patterns of centre/periphery exploitation and financial subordination (Alami et al 2023), what exactly is being unearthed, extracted, and removed appears to have shifted. We are especially interested in how these processes intersect with ‘anti-woke’ political realignments that sew chaos along lines of gender, sexuality, diversity, ethnicity, and anti-environmentalism. The panel welcomes ethnographically driven accounts of the extractive politics of economic chaos, with particular attention to material processes of impoverishment and destitution left in their wake.

Alami, I., et al, 2023. International financial subordination: a critical research agenda. Review of International Political Economy, 30(4), 1360-1386.

Röpke, W. (1935). Fascist economics. Economica, 2(5), 85-100.

Papers for this plenary panel might consider:

1. What new forms of extractivism exist in relation to fascist economics? Novel forms of extractivism include data scraping for algorithmic training, new digital and financial models, contemporary Agribusinesses, profiting off greenwashing, as well as more literal extractivisms such as seabed mining, offshore wind and fish farms.  

2. How might new forms of extractivism replicate and/or be distinguished from older colonial forms?

3. What does it mean ethnographically when resources are taken by the few while a “lyrical unreality and terminological futility” unfolds?  What politics of economic chaos can be discerned?

• Must be a resident of a low- or middle-income country (using the most recent World Bank classification)

• Must be a precarious scholar and/or postgraduate student without institutional support

• Must have limited or no access to institutional or other funding sources

• Must be presenting original research at the ASAA/NZ 2025 conference

Please note that funding for this award is limited and competitive. We are not in a position to support all applicants.

These travel awards will include:

• A grant of up to NZ$1000 to contribute towards travel and accommodation costs

• Conference registration fee waiver

• Complimentary ASAA/NZ membership for three years

To apply, applicants must:

• Meet the eligibility criteria

• Have submitted an abstract for presentation at the ASAA/NZ 2025 conference (award conditional on the abstract being accepted by the ASAA/NZ Conference Organising Committee)

• Be present throughout the duration of the conference

• Submit a complete travel award application via email by the due date

To apply for a travel award, please submit your application via email to asaanz2025@gmail.com with the subject line “ASAA/NZ 2025 Travel Award Application – [your last name]”. Your email should include the following information, as an attachment in one document (PDF preferred): 

• Your 250-word abstract (as submitted to the ASAA/NZ 2025 Conference Organising Committee)

• A 500-word research summary 

• A short description (approx. 250 words) of your current funding context and how a travel award would support your conference participation

• An estimated budget for your travel and accommodation costs, with evidence of those estimated costs (e.g. flight/accommodation screenshots or quotes, where possible)

Applications will be promptly reviewed, and applicants will be notified of the outcome by 30 September 2025. 

Travel awards will be granted based on the following criteria:

• Significance and clarity of abstract

• Must be a precarious scholar and/or postgraduate student without institutional support

• Preference given to applicants from Oceania and Southeast Asia

• Must be eligible to apply for a visa to enter New Zealand (if not a New Zealand citizen)

Important: ASAA/NZ can supply official invitation letters to international attendees to help support the visa application process. However, please note that ASAA/NZ does not organise visas on your behalf, and that an invitation letter from us does not guarantee visa approval.

By accepting this award, recipients commit to:

• Attending and presenting at the 2025 conference as scheduled

• Notifying ASAA/NZ immediately if circumstances change that would prevent attendance

• Understanding that failure to attend without prior notification may affect future funding opportunities