Building on the momentum of the 2023 ASA conference “An Unwell World? Anthropology in a Speculative Mode,” this event will revisit a pressing question: how can anthropology move beyond diagnosis toward imagining and fostering forms of healing? In a world marked by the aftershocks of a global pandemic, escalating climate crises, geopolitical conflict, deepening inequalities, and widespread mental distress, the sense of living in a profoundly “unwell” world will remain difficult to ignore.
Anthropology has long excelled at identifying and analyzing such conditions—tracing the social, cultural, and political roots of crisis. Yet this gathering will shift the focus toward possibility. What forms of repair, restoration, and redistribution might already be embedded within anthropological insights? How can the discipline contribute not only to critique, but also to envisioning and shaping more just and sustainable futures?
Organized around five interconnected themes—Planet, Habitation, Politics and Governance, Relations, and Bodies/Minds—the event will open space for reflecting on well-being in its broadest sense. From ecological and institutional breakdowns to embodied and psychological experiences, participants will explore how people navigate, endure, and reimagine life under conditions of uncertainty and strain.
By bringing together diverse perspectives, the event will invite contributors to think speculatively and creatively about anthropology’s role in a troubled world—asking how its knowledge can help anticipate, articulate, and cultivate alternative pathways toward collective and planetary well-being.