MEGA 2014, Sønderborg

The annual Danish Anthropological MEGA seminar, at a misty mansion now serving as a conference venue, surrounded by water, trees, mud and ducks. MEGA apparently just stands for itself.

Open and enthusiastic panels with thought provoking questions, extended keynote ponderings, short snappy papers, food and waterside strolls. I spoke about Conflict of Interest in Ethics Committee trainings, as part of a panel on Law and Intimacy organised by Lotte Buch Segal and Helene Risør. We had a set of good ethnographic stories, attentive listeners and organisers with the foresight to bring Daim bars for presenters and Haribo for the audience.

It was from my first Danish conference that I got a sense of the range of  ethnographies currently being undertaken in Britain and Scotland. Nigel Rapport is writing about the British 20thC painter Stanley Spencer, his morals and controversial artistic distortions. Adam Reed gave a  careful working over of ‘acting with the law in mind’ in his keynote “Crow Kill” with trespass, the right to roam and the ‘forensic’ gaze of animal rights activists in Scotland.  Morten Nielsen reflected –  through the farmers on Islay  – on the ‘ARtB’ (Absolute Right to Buy) currently under discussion in Scotland.

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