Rudolf Havelka, who is working on religion, ecology and spirituality among the Forest Nenets hunters and herders, brings the following to our attention:
Dear colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to this upcoming EASR (European Association of the Study of Religions) conference held at Södertörn University, Stockholm on 23-26 August, 2012. The general topic of the conference is “End and Beginnings”. So far, there are two possible panels for us: Anthropology of Religions and Religious Minorities in the Soviet Union. For your inspiration, I shall join the first one with paper “Is the indigenous religion of the Forest Nenets finished?”
The deadline for submitting the abstracts is April 30th.
Please visit their website for more information. Looking forward to some interesting discussions there.
Rudolf Havelka
Arctic Anthropology 
I was a graudate student in cultural anthropology back in the 1970s, when structuralism and post-modernism were NEW! and HOT! in the humanities and social sciences. I knew it was codswallop, but I was too young and unsure of myself to argue effectively against it, or to find alternative ground. Many years later, I can say with more assurance that ethnography is nothing but journalism if it doesn’t deal with issues of reliability and replicability. Furthermore, if it truly IS the study of humanity from early hominids to the present, then it has to *encompass* the other social sciences and much of humanities. The existence of anthropology departments is an accident of academic history, set in stone by academics fiercely defending their turf and tenured positions. I think that there’s a place for the epistemological critique of anthropology and the other social sciences, but it’s in the philosophy department.