CASCA 2027

Call for contributions

We invite CASCA 2027 attendees to consider serendipity, something that shapes the generative possibilities of both our discipline and our individual and collective lives. Serendipity is wrapped up with ideas of chance, the unprogrammed, and the unexpected in our encounters. It emerges from the generative, creative, and transformative possibilities where the unplanned results in a moment of reflection and unexpected clarity. It involves realizing one thing while looking for another. Bound up in serendipity is the sagacity of the person on the journey; the openness to potential and the capacity to find needed knowledge independent of the original quest. There is something inherently anthropological in this reflexive, generative moment that requires one's own wisdom to recognize. Horace Walpole coined the term in 1754 after hearing the fairy tale of the Three Princes of Serendip, emphasizing the generation of understanding through a combination of chance and good reasoning. We stumble on things by chance, and the serendipitous moment emerges when we apply the wisdom to make something of it, grasping broader meanings about surrounding phenomena. As in the tale of the Three Princes, the ultimate discovery diverges from the initial quest; insight is encountered rather than actively found.

Within anthropology, good ethnography relies on the flexibility to gain insight from unexpected opportunities alongside pre-planned methodologies. The detours or challenging moments encountered when stepping off the planned path or away from institutional structures are where we often find the perspectives we require. Openness to these diversions is how academic summers, sabbaticals, and short field visits offer periods of discovery. At annual conferences, the value often resides in serendipitous intersections with colleagues and the intellectual connections forged in hallways, lobbies, and informal roundtables. These moments restore a sense of humanity within our institutional environments. Reclaiming serendipity acts as an exercise in reflexivity, a practice anthropology knows well. It addresses the epistemological and political conditions of emergent knowledge in everyday fieldwork. Serendipity demands receptive vulnerability—the capacity of the researcher to be altered by encounters that disrupt planned scientific designs.

We found inspiration to consider this dynamic while re-watching a scene from Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, the 1988 PBS documentary series featuring conversations between the mythologist and journalist Bill Moyers (a clip of this video is here: https://youtu.be/Pu5yeULxJac). In academia, we navigate our own version of the hero's journey, paralleling the characters of the Star Wars universe discussed by Campbell, each navigating our own follies and inner complexities. Throughout our anthropological journey, we gain the experience, knowledge, and power required to understand and grapple with the encounters we take on.

Early in our fieldwork, we may lack the capacity to grasp what people tell us; their words may present as non-sequiturs or go overlooked, failing to resonate. As we progress and gain experience, we become equipped for what we encounter. In this series, Campbell observed that "the achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for," representing a manifestation of character. He emphasizes how "the landscape and the conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero". A serendipitous adventure unfolds when we possess the maturity to draw insights from unexpected situations. The adventure we are ready for becomes the one we receive.

This readiness allows us to come to know ourselves and the worlds in which we become entangled. Campbell details how such adventures evoke qualities of character previously unknown to the traveler, citing the example of a practical mercenary discovering a latent compassion. By allowing ourselves to step toward the "jumping off place" into the "outlying spaces" of our research, we enable transformation. When fortune permits, this process of encountering the unexpected and assimilating the resulting knowledge shapes how our work as anthropologists transforms the lives of others.

Cultivating this receptive vulnerability requires a specific way of being that allows for serendipitous encounters. Beyond a reliance on chance occurrences, finding serendipity in a busy life necessitates maintaining open possibilities in our interactions. Resisting the urge to script the details keeps these avenues open. Serendipity functions as a way of knowing, a method for putting wisdom into action, and an openness to the world. Approaching our practice as an unfolding journey transforms routine fieldwork into something Campbell may have called an adventure. Choosing this unmapped path may invite skepticism and pressure to produce predictable outcomes. We may feel uncomfortable stating that we are embarking on a serendipitous adventure, a framing which may appear foolish to some observers. Success on such an adventure depends on the time and space we make to gain insight, which often manifests at inconvenient times. We must actively build time for this practice of possibility, acknowledging our position within institutionally programmed worlds that may view such approaches as foolish.

The open-ended nature of anthropological inquiry stands in tension with the structured agendas of neoliberal funding bodies and institutional ethics committees. Early-career researchers frequently navigate pre-established project themes that omit space for exploratory detour or failure, and senior researchers face schedules that make finding serendipity difficult.

The professional precarity of contract faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars in Canada and beyond is exacerbated by institutional demands for constant, standardized, and predictable output. Under current audit regimes, scholars face pressure to present planned, risk-averse research designs that exclude exploratory detours, slow writing, or creative failures. Embracing serendipity serves as a direct political critique of these academic audit cultures.

Framed through a decolonial lens, serendipity also represents a commitment to epistemic humility and an opening to move away from extractive research practices. It acknowledges that collaboration is built on the willingness of the researcher to be disrupted, redirected, and altered by the agency of host communities. The freedom to engage in this serendipitous practice is fleeting for many in academia today, though the people with whom we work, operating outside these institutional pressures, often possess the space for serendipitous lives.

In his discussion on the belly of the whale –a metaphor for descending into the dark to confront the unconscious –Campbell poses a question that mirrors our current academic reality. He warns of the threat of living strictly in terms of a system, asking whether the system will eat us up and relieve us of our humanity, or whether we can use the system for human purposes. While the concept of serendipity has sometimes informed anthropological theory and method, it has never, to our knowledge, served as an organizing motif for a conference. Centering serendipity at CASCA 2027 offers a space to practice receptive vulnerability. It provides an opportunity to use our institutional gatherings for human purposes, preserving the openness required for anthropological encounters.

We invite panel, roundtable, individual paper, poster proposals, and non-conventional activities / events that engage with, and / or create serendipity. The deadline to submit a proposal through our website is Friday, January, 15, 2027.

The annual CASCA conference will take place at the University of Victoria located on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples, and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples who have maintained historical relationships with the land and waters.

Accepted participants will be invited to register and pay the registration fee after the notification of acceptance on February 26, 2027. Membership dues and registration fees must be paid by March 19, 2027.