SANT Conference 2026: Interventions

Theme: Interventions

In the world around us, interventions take place in all spheres of life and at every imaginable scale. They may be grand or modest, deliberate or accidental, transformative or destructive. A government policy, a medical treatment, a social movement, an artistic act, a conversation, or the presence of an anthropologist in the field or the lecture room: all may be understood as interventions. They share a common desire to make change, to redirect the flow of life and meaning. Yet the outcomes of interventions are never fully predictable. They may generate care, curiosity, and connection, or provoke resistance, refusal, and rupture. Interventions always act in the space in-between people, institutions, ideas, and possible futures. 

Anthropology studies interventions, their rationale, effects and responses. Often, anthropology positions itself in critique, resisting or exposing the consequences of intervention, or exploring what it might mean to hold back, to refrain, to not act. Moreover, anthropology has always been bound up with intervention. Doing anthropology is never neutral: the presence of an anthropologist alters the relations, stories, and meanings that come into view. Through writing, teaching, and collaboration, anthropologists participate in how others think and act. Sometimes this is deliberate, a choice to use knowledge as engagement, at other times, intervention occurs unexpectedly, through relationships that pull us into new responsibilities. Increasingly, anthropology is urged to intervene. Climate crisis, injustice, and displacement call for more than being observers, but risks replicating the power dynamics we critique. What might responsible, yet critical, anthropological interventions, in research, teaching, and public engagement, look like?

Call for panels/papers

SANT 2026 invites reflection on the many forms and meanings of intervention within anthropology, its ethics, its politics, and its affective charge. What does it mean to intervene, to be intervened upon, or to remain indifferent? When does intervention become an act of care, and when does it reproduce domination? What kinds of relations and forms of knowledge are generated through intervening, and what possibilities arise from hesitation or refusal? 

We are looking for contributions across all areas of anthropological practice: fieldwork, teaching, writing, activism, and applied research. Papers not strictly related to interventions are also welcome.

Panels will be given two hours and papers 20 minutes, unless panel organizers decide otherwise. Please send a 250 word abstract of your panel proposal or paper with title and contact details, please indicate if you already have potential contributors for your panel. Submissions can be made in either English or Swedish.