In 2018 the Transdisciplinary Research Centre «Culture, Space and Memory» (CITCEM) will hold the International Colloquium – "Ways of Making". The theme of this conference is in line with the Centre’s own research objectives. This colloquium will be a joint endeavour between CITCEM and a scientific and cultural association – the SPAE, Portuguese Society of Anthropology and Ethnology – an association which this year celebrates its first centenary. SPAE was founded in Porto by a group of various notable individuals, several of which were affiliated with the University of Porto.

 

This conference is aimed at all academic fields of study within the borders of Social and Human Sciences that may contribute to a reflection on the far-reaching issue of “making”, of “knowing how to make”. The topic points to a multitude of ways to deal with available materials and resources and the active manner in which said materials and resources – each of them with their own respective specific aspects – influence and intervene in our own ways of acting, thinking, of generating wealth and imparting knowledge.

 

Through case studies, or theoretical reflections, the aim of this colloquium is to stimulate transdisciplinary readings, capable of demonstrating not only the profound affinities between various academic areas that, albeit appearing to be vastly dissimilar, cover all human action – a process that always occurs through the mediation of materials, objects, instruments, as well as their interrelationship with non-scholarly forms of knowledge –, emphasising the processes by which we, as human beings, create things, create environments, create worlds, while we are equally created by them, in a deep-seated and inextricable interrelationship.

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