FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THIS YEAR’S MEETING SEE THE NEWS PAGE
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ASA Activities at the 2023 AAA Meeting – Transitions – Toronto, Ontario, Ca
PROGRAM
Conversations Across the Generations: Transitions from Paper Field Notes and Visual Documentation to Mixed Methods and Digital Recording of Ethnographic and Archeological Field Data
Roundtable/Town Hall (in-person)
PARTICIPANTS: Tim Wallace (organizer and chair), Sarah Taylor, John Page, Jeffrey Ehrenreich, Ruth Van Dyke, Ken Seligson
ABSTRACT: This roundtable brings together senior scholars and young, emerging scholars to discuss and debate the associations between documenting ethnographic observations and recording the archaeological record. Ethnographers and archaeologists have for generations developed methods of recording observations and measurements in field sites. Each new generation creates new technologies and approaches for documenting field observations in ethnography, and handwritten notes in paper notebooks have been replaced by fieldnotes, spreadsheets, network analysis, photo and audio files, interview recordings, resulting in changes in ethnographic products in response to new methods of collecting data. In archaeology, mapping and photography have become much more sophisticated with drones, Lidar, and visualization techniques. But do these contemporary techniques replace or do they enhance the practices developed generations ago by our earlier colleagues? Do new technologies replace participant observation as a means of data collection, and objectify field experiences? Do they aid, change, enhance the recording of field observations? Do they bias or constrain observations in new ways unlike biases occurring through participant observation? Are they more or less inclusive of the interlocutor lens? Do they offer our interlocutors more or less opportunity to enter the ethnographic dialogue? Have archaeologists been able to better “see” and report their data with these new techniques? Or are archaeologists held hostage to new techniques that are delightful to look at but obscure the basic relationships between humans and the environment in which they lived? The scholars in this roundtable represent different generations of ethnographers. They will reflect on, share and critique earlier and current approaches to data collection and the implications of changes for ethnographic and archaeologic recording, interpretation and results.
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A Collaborative Approach to Anthropological Ethics: Revising the Current 2012 AAA “Principles of Professional Responsibility”
Roundtable/Town Hall (in-person)
PARTICIPANTS: Stephen Schensul and Elizabeth Crocker (organizers), Stephen Schensul (chair), Naomi Adelson, Jean Schensul, David Stephenson
ABSTRACT: The 2012 “Principles of Professional Responsibility” (https://ethics.americananthro.org/category/statement) represent the most current statement of the ethical principles of the American Anthropological Association. These ethical guidelines center on the anthropologist as ethical decision maker, identifying “the possible ways that the research might cause harm,” “…what is in the best interests of others,” “unintended consequences and long-term impacts,” the “…potential impact of …[the] research and…dissemination of the results, ” “competing ethical obligations” and “asymmetries of power.” Based on this ethical statement, the anthropologist has full, complete, and independent agency to determine all ethical aspects of the research endeavor, modified only by an institutional IRB with little knowledge of the specific field situation and investigation. The organizers of this session see field research, conducted by any four-fields, basic or applied anthropologist, as a complex negotiation in which ethical agency must be shared between the and the people under study or the populations that are impacted by a study. The 2012 Principles of Professional Responsibility do not address these issues, nor the challenges of ethical autonomy, leading to the need to revise our ethics statement to address a more proactive relationship with the individuals, communities and populations that have previously been our “objects/subjects” of study. The goal of the session is to develop guidelines and suggestions for modification and expansion of the 2012 AAA Ethics statement to facilitate collaborative research engagement. The session will begin with analysis of the current ethics statement and examples of challenges anthropologists face that require more ethical guidance than the current principles offer. Each small group roundtable will be organized on one of the following themes:
• Negotiating entry and positionality
• Determining research questions
• Rapport, relationships, and reciprocity
• Collaboration in the research process
• Dissemination and voice
• Ownership and control of data.
Roundtable facilitators will briefly introduce the theme and a case example to facilitate discussion of appropriate changes to the current ethical guidelines. Using examples presented and their own experience, participants will draft principles or sub-principles related to these topics that reflect more specific concerns for the welfare, needs and perspectives of the people studied and/or potentially impacted by anthropological research. Each roundtable will report out. Organizers will collate the proposed additions and modifications and present them to the AAA and appropriate committees.
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Between Professional Stranger and Auto-Ethnographer: Degrees of Belonging in Anthropological Research
Paper Presentation Session (in-person)
PARTICIPANTS: Jim Weil (organizer), William P. Mitchell (chair), Myrdene Anderson, Jack Glazier, Rena Lederman, Phyllis Passariello, Francine, Saillant, Yohko Tsuji, Virginia Dominguez (discussant), Susan Trencher (discussant)
ABSTRACT: The title of Michael Agar’s “The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography” implies a research focus on the so-called “other.” In contrast, panelists in this session provide examples of ways anthropologists have been or become part of the groups in which they work. Their presentations consider the extent to which they bridge or efface the dichotomy between “us” and “them” in fieldwork. How have relationships between the extremes of complete stranger and auto-ethnographic subject developed? Have involvements intensified along a continuum during their careers through ongoing research? …long-term residence? …local employment or marriage? …post-retirement engagements? This is especially relevant for senior anthropologists who have experienced transitions in their own professional approaches and witnessed profound changes in the discipline. Now it may be more common to do research “at home” and less common in settings which, in one way or another, can be considered remote. Kirin Narayan (1993) raises challenging issues in what it means to be a “native anthropologist.” Where anthropologists share an essential or existential identity with a local population, does a necessary element of professional detachment estrange them from their own neighborhoods, organizations, or other interaction sites and reference groups? Are we doing auto-ethnography when we debate over what it means to be an anthropologist, distinguishing our own identity within the discipline from identities we don’t share with all of our colleagues (Goldschmidt 1977; Trencher 2000). Over many decades, moreover, the shift of emphasis from holistic community studies to ethnographies with local manifestations of global problems has countered the exoticism of past orientations and practices (MacClancy 2019). Also, cultural hybridity makes us members of multiple groups in widening circles of inclusiveness. Might our personal backgrounds and choices of research sites have become less crucial now than a professional stance combining reflexivity, self-effacement, and ethical commitment? In what ways have anthropologists developed their personal identity to resist and overcome the compartmentalization of the social contexts in which they live and work? (Bolles 1985). Many have carried out research in two or more contrasting settings (Gottlieb 2012). Accordingly, in an ideal world, what additional benefits can be expected when those who so choose, have opportunities to draw from at least one fieldwork project in a community or equivalent setting they define as their own and in at least one other as unfamiliar as possible?
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Anthropology is Dying from a Thousand Cuts
Roundtable/Town Hall (in-person)
PARTICIPANTS: Alice Kehoe (organizer and chair), Noel Dyck, Rick Feinberg, Evin Rodkey
ABSTRACT: Franz Boas established Anthropology as a discipline with four subfields, reflecting: humans as biological organisms – genus Homo within Order Primates; human societies as culturally diversified; the archaeological past; linguistics. Anthropology’s strength is its recognition that we cannot understand human behavior without taking into account our physical nature derived from ancestors, the patterning of behaviors through imitating and learning from other people, the influence of histories, and our unique capacity for expression and communication in words. Anthropology is rooted in the fundamental theoretical position that the four specialties are different facets of what it means to be human. Democracy––rule by the people––is natural in selection for gregarious living, while it is challenged by cultural patterns supported by aspects of our evolutionary heritage such as lust, hoarding, fear of strangers and bonding for defense. When the broad foundation of American anthropology is gutted by academic cuts and restructuring into capitalist enterprises exploiting possessive individualism, we lose not only our unique understanding of the empirical reality of the human organism Homo sapiens, but also opportunities to awaken our compatriots to the humane values integral to our discipline, transitioning from “silos” to solidarity. Our professional associations should work to increase community, technical and tribal colleges’ outreach to all residents, and to support courses in anthropology that begin with a four-field introductory course understood to be relevant to every person, regardless of their employment strategies, because everyone is a Homo sapiens. All our professional organizations are doing outreach. In numbers there is strength. possible?
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Compiling Fragments of an Anthropological Memoir
Special Event: Mentoring (in-person)
PARTICIPANTS: Jim Weil (organizer), Marion Berghahn, Maria Cattell, Paul Stoller, Maria Vesperi
ABSTRACT: This activity is intended for anthropologists who have done some autobiographical writing and seek guidance in preparing partial or full memoirs that position their work in the broader contexts of the places and times in which they have lived. Such a memoir might emphasize one or both of the following: (1) settings, events, and experiences, beginning in childhood, that shape choices leading to an anthropological career; (2) ongoing influences of social positioning in personal and public life, and how these affect opportunities and choices in professional practice. One objective of the activity is to develop a shared understanding of the possibilities of synthesizing ethnography, ethnohistory, and autobiography in a hybrid genre which could be called auto-ethnohistory. The event is led by senior colleagues who have worked on and thought about memoirs from an anthropological perspective. Potentially distinctive features of ethnographic approaches to anthropologists’ own lives are addressed. Relevant concepts and methods include auto/ethnography (Reed-Danahay 1977), the ethnographic self (Collins and Gallinat 2010), anthropological autobiography (Okely and Callaway 1992), self-narrative (Chang 2008), and social memory (Climo and Cattell 2002). Refinements in epistemology and representation are considered (Zenker and Kumoll 2010), and suggestions about writing forms, techniques, and strategies are offered (Waterston and Vesperi 2011; Wulff 2016). Some of the participants read brief passages of their autobiographical writings which demonstrate the mutual interactions between their personal and professional orientations. The convenors discuss these
readings and respond to questions and comments from other attendees. The mentoring concludes with breakout groups or one-on-one conversations to help colleagues draw from their own lives in selecting scenarios to portray in analytic vignettes. Likely take-aways include the reintegration of neglected memories, enabling further evaluation of underlying purposes and resulting practices, which in turn may lead to new directions in later career development. Critical assessments of anthropology have made it increasingly difficult to ignore the historical matrix that channels the interests, explanations, interpretations, and goals of each practitioner in a distinctive way. Memoir writing, while promising personal insights on its own terms, can address perplexing issues involving anthropological reflexivity in approaches, encounters, and responses that remain controversial within the discipline and beyond.
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Retirement: Strategies for Successful Transition to “Works After Work”
Special Event: Mentoring (in-person)
PARTICIPANTS: Tim Wallace (organizer and chair), Jean Schlensul, Stephen Schensul
ABSTRACT: The term “retirement” is defined by Merriam Webster in two alternative parts, first by “withdrawal from one’s position or occupation” or second, “[withdrawal] from active working life. In this special mentoring event conducted by the Association of Senior Anthropologists (ASA), we reject the notion of withdrawal from active [working] life and the “r” word that characterizes this sometimesmaligned status, to explore the opportunities for “works after work.” For anthropologists entering the latter stages of their careers, works after work can be defined broadly to include the incorporation of both anthropologically related and unrelated activities that enhance our lives and contribute to ours and others’ well-being. This event will bring together senior anthropologists who have established a wide variety of pathways that include continuing full, part-time, or volunteer teaching and research, applying for government grants and awards (e.g., Fulbright), consultation to non-profit organizations, archiving the products of lifetime work, “fixing” and “defending” anthropology or engaging in non-anthropological activities (e.g., art, boat building, bike riding, travel) that create or expand on new skills and social networks. These pathways are presented to provide and discuss examples and models to assist in defining an individual’s own works after work.
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Luncheon at Pearl Harbourfront Chinese Cuisine Restaurant
The splendid feast of platter upon platter of dim sum and other delicacies was enjoyed by all, a traditional annual gathering of ASA members and guests.
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Field Trip to the Textile Museum of Canada
The TMC offers exhibits and a collection of historical textiles from around the world. Exhibitions and educational programming also highlight the work of contemporary artists inspired by the collection and its traditions, demonstrating the museum’s commitment to engage in innovative ways with the communities whose stories and cultures are shared in gallery outreach and events. The visit featured talks by Dr. Lynne Milgram, co-founding TMC member, and Sarah Quinton, Curatorial Director Emerita, on the history of the museum, historical textiles housed at the museum, and examples of combining historical and contemporary textiles in curated exhibitions. The gallery tour, led by Roxanne Shaughnessy, Senior Curator and Manager of Collections, included the current exhibit, Gathering, exploring themes related to migration and diaspora, the search for comfort in the domestic and familial, reclamation of ancestral traditions through contemporary artistic responses, and the relationship between textiles and the environment.
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Field Trip to the Royal Ontario Museum
The Association of Senior Anthropologists together with the American Anthropological Association, the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA), and the Royal Ontario Museum sponsored an afternoon at the ROM. Opened in 1914, the ROM is Canada’s largest and most comprehensive museum, showcasing art, culture and nature from around the world and across the ages. The visit was organized by Dr. Chen Shen, Co-Chief Curator of Arts and Culture. Tours of two exhibits were featured: Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery, introduced by Dr. Shen, and Being and Belonging: Contemporary Women Artists from the Islamic World and Beyond, introduced by co-curator Dr. Fahmida Suleman.
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ASA Activities at the 2022 AAA Meeting – Unsettling Landscapes – Seattle, WA
ANNUAL MEETING EVENTS
Do Something for Your Country, Leave! The Impact of International Volunteers on Anthropology (Invited Session)
Oral Presentation Session
ABSTRACT:
The proliferation of international volunteer organizations after WW2 not only had a profound impact on the lives of the enthusiastic participants, but in turn those participants were to shape the discipline of anthropology. With the expansion of international programs like VSO, Peace Corps and Fulbright, numbers of mostly young people spent a year or more in other countries, often in poorer parts of the world little known to them. Anecdotally it would appear that these experiences led to a dramatic increase in the number of students interested in learning about anthropology and in some cases to go on to pursue a career in the discipline. In addition, these experiences were to impact the direction of anthropology, a field that was still a relatively “young” social science. Most returnees had been immersed in a foreign culture; they learnt the local language, developed working networks with colleagues, and built a large circle of friends in their host community. They were also identified by their hosts as representatives of their own home culture, which offered them an alternative perspective on themselves. When these culturally aware students went on to enter the field of anthropology as graduate students, they brought with them their own assumptions, based on the experience of entering into and living within another society, and developing their own ideas about how those cultures could be translated into terms that made sense to outsiders. Many found themselves ready to challenge the academic approaches of existing authorities: the salvage work of earlier generations, recreating the ethnographic present of past societies, for example, seemed less relevant for understanding current conditions and needs, while structural analyses of single tribes threw little light on the complexities of post-colonial urban societies. In this session we contribute to discussion about how anthropology has been impacted by this influx of internationally experienced students. Questions include (though are not limited to) how they changed the way in which our discipline was taught; how they affected the kinds of research problems undertaken or the locales in which research was conducted; the influence they have had in shaping what was first separated as “applied” anthropology and later came to be called “practicing” anthropology; and the relationship between these anthropologists and the larger social movements (anti-racism, gender equity, anti-war) in the second half of the twentieth century.
PARTICIPANTS:
Susan Kenyon (organizer and chair)
Jim Weil
Sabra Webber
Tim Wallace
Laurel Kendall
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Making a Difference: Activism and the Boundaries of Academic Anthropology (Invited Session)
Oral Presentation Session
ABSTRACT:
This session raises nuanced questions of balance between demands for a more public anthropology, with direct interventions that stem from real life concerns, and broader conceptual and descriptive objectives. The presenters reflect on “actionist” approaches which sometimes emphasize their more general scholarly purposes and sometimes their pragmatic application of theory and method to bring about desired changes in their fieldwork sites and the communities they live in, including impacts on themselves, their families, neighbors, friends, students, and co-workers.
From the early years of applied anthropology to recent efforts to establish a decolonized anthropology, the goal of knowledge for knowledge’s sake has often been considered an insufficient or inappropriate rationale for the discipline. By the middle of the twentieth century, iconoclasts were breaking away from the primarily academic orientation of their peers. In contrasting ways, for instance, Eliot Chapple advocated “industrial anthropology” to shape a more efficient labor force and Sol Tax advocated “action anthropology” on behalf of the people with whom we work. Since the turbulent 1960s, controversies over justice and equity issues have continued. Disagreements over professional orientations and practices have been further exacerbated by the degradation of academic employment, with job security and support for work beyond teaching becoming more elusive.
Many academically based anthropologists find ways of engaging with public issues through their teaching and scholarship. For anthropologists convinced that the role of the researcher is to document, describe, and theorize, the additional step to intervention may be uncomfortable or even unacceptable. Yet, for those who maintain continuing relationships in field sites, bearing witness to significant change is an applied pursuit, provided that it fosters actions deemed necessary.
The world of and beyond scholarly ethnographic projects encompasses various approaches to problem solving all along the political spectrum. Taking sides regarding injustices is nothing new, in that nineteenth-century anthropologists were involved in the abolitionist movement, even as others promoted racist eugenics. Anthropologists have worked on both sides of military conflicts, for and against colonial and neocolonial governments, through and around bureaucracies. Few, if any, have not made mistakes or fallen short of their goals. And stances based on anthropological initiatives may well elicit counter-narratives and backlash. All such engagement requires reflection on one’s own stance and involves ethical considerations, power politics, and potential benefits versus harm.
Senior anthropologists may develop a deep understanding of the settings where the work takes place. Regardless of purposes and number of years in the field, historical insight serves to position actionist work within shifting conditions and transformations over time. While anthropologists have portrayed and analyzed everyday life for the benefit of posterity, their accounts often address more immediate concerns of the people among whom they have worked. Knowledge of the past, as experienced and understood by those who lived it, serves as a resource supporting appropriate initiatives in the here and the now. Activism in general will be less effective if it neglects constructive lessons from past engagements and functions predominantly through a presentist mindset.
PARTICIPANTS:
Jim Weil (organizer and chair)
Jean Schensul
Margaret LeCompte
Moshe Shokeid
Rick Feinberg
William P. Mitchell
Kathleen Fine-Dare (discussant)
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Memorializing Stephen O. Murray: Interdisciplinary Synthesizer
Virtual Session
ABSTRACT:
The late Stephen O. Murray’s (1950-2019) practices of anthropology continue as a cogent example of an emergent, forward-looking anthropology, attending to multiple points of view in its histories. This panel memorializes, celebrates, and punctuates his visionary and interdisciplinary contributions, not to mention his broad range of work, including linguistics, regional ethnography (Latin America and Asia), activism, history of anthropology (integration of the social sciences), and migration studies. Murray’s methodological innovations of combining qualitative interviews with quantitative approaches whose correlations call for interpretation are especially underscored. Moreover, this panel invites friends, colleagues, and admirers to collectively participate in commemorating the life and work of Stephen O. Murray.
PARTICIPANTS:
Joshua Smith (organizer and chair)
Regna Darnell
Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz
Ralph Bolton
Barry Adam
Robert Oppenheim
Milton Machuca-Galvez
Marc Epprecht
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Conversations across Generations: Anthropology in Times of Crisis, Then and Now
Roundtable / Town Hall
PARTICIPANTS:
Sofia Pinedo-Padoch (organizer and chair)
Wei Gan
Myrdene Anderson
Courtney Canter
Kerry J. Pataki-Schweizer
Ipsita Dey
Phyllis Pasariello
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ASA Luncheon at Daawat Indian Grill
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ASA Field Trip to Burke Museum: “Tiny Talks” by Museum Curators
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Reception Honoring Alice Kehoe’s Contributions to the Association of Senior Anthropologists on the Occasion of the Publication of Her Memoir
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ASA Activities at the 2021 AAA Meeting – Truth and Responsibility – Baltimore, MD
The American Anthropological Association arranged a hybrid annual meeting in 2021. Those attending onsite at the Baltimore Convention Center also had access to the online events. After the Covid pandemic necessitated a fully virtual meeting in 2020, members of the Association of Senior Anthropologists and their guests who gathered in Baltimore appreciated more fully than ever the opportunity for in-person encounters.
Baltimore inner harbor near the Convention Center [Credit: Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi]
Our board and business meetings had been held online earlier, so the traditional luncheon—covered by member dues—was a purely social event. We share here illustrations of the setting and some of the happy faces of those who feasted at the Irish pub Tir Na Nog.
Tir Na Nog bar and shepherd’s pie [Credit: Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi]
Luncheon, with (clockwise from left) Jim Weil, Tim Wallace, David Stoll, Simon Kenyon, Tom Blakely, two not visible, Larry Loeb (at end of table), Rich Warms, Margo Smith (standing), one not visible, Alice Kehoe, Pamela Blakely, Sue Kenyon, Jeffrey Ehrenreich, Roijin Tamakoshi, Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi [Credit Herb Lewis]
Margo Smith and Ray Scupin, the first two from the left; Jim Stanlaw and Rick Feinberg the first two from right [Credit: Herb Lewis]
In contrast to the rather sparse attendance at most of the live AAA events in Baltimore, one of the featured sessions sponsored by the ASA packed the room. The presenters reviewed the contributions of Alfred L. Kroeber to anthropology, the poignancy of their assessments heightened by the removal of his name from anthropology building at the University of California – Berkeley, Kroeber Hall, earlier in the year,.
Panelists in the Kroeber session, facing forward from the left: Jack Glazier, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Herb Lewis (at podium), and Stanley Brandes (onscreen), with the simultaneous transcription shown on the right [Credit: Sue Kenyon]
Central hallway at Baltimore Convention Center almost empty [Credit: Sue Kenyon]
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Program committee chair Maria Cattell oversaw the planning of a full array of events. A list of all the panels follows, with titles, abstracts, and participants. Proposals for another fine ASA program at this year’s meeting are now under review.
Anthropology and Activism
Thursday, 6:30-8:15 PM
Roundtable / Townhall (In-Person)
ABSTRACT: This roundtable continues and elaborates on the discussion held by several of the same participants in a virtual roundtable last year. This roundtable is inherently concerned with the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and/or analysis of power. All of the participants are activists working on these issues and discussion of our work will be a central part of our conversation. Issues that participants work on, and which will be subjects of discussion, include racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and other invidious distinctions that exploit individuals both in the US and around the world. The roundtable will expand the discussion from last year with a consideration of the broader relationship between anthropology and activism. We will discuss questions such as: What does the concept of culture add to the way that activism is carried out by anthropologists? Does the virtual absence of a recognition of community dissensus and class conflict hinder our activism? Does cultural relativism, in its most extreme form, impede the practice of activism among anthropologists? How does anthropological methodology, especially our emphasis on qualitative study in a naturalistic context, contribute to the kind of activism in which we engage? How, then, do journalism, filmmaking and other forms of critical “witnessing” become important modes for anthropological activism? The many years of experience of roundtable participants will provide a historical perspective to the topic of activism in anthropology. We will discuss, for example, the increasingly tight job market and the manner in which it may leave less time for activism than was the case several decades ago. This will lead us to consider opportunities that do exist, or which we may help create, outside the academy for employment and activism and the implications of this consideration for how we should train students today.
PARTICIPANTS:
Martin Schoenhals, Organizer, Chair, Roundtable Presenter
Carol Mukhopadhyay, Roundtable Presenter
Yolanda T. Moses, Roundtable Presenter
Kathleen Fine-Dare, Roundtable Presenter
Linda J. Seligmann, Roundtable Presenter
Raymond Schwartz, Roundtable Presenter
Jeanne Simonelli, Discussant
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Alfred L. Kroeber: The Man, His Work and His Legacy (Invited Session)
Friday, 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Oral Presentation (In-Person)
ABSTRACT: Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960) was once considered the “Dean of American Anthropology.” He was Franz Boas’ first Ph.D. student at Columbia University and the heir to his reputation—despite their intellectual disagreements. Kroeber was the founder and the predominant intellectual force in the University of California-Berkeley department of anthropology from 1901 until his retirement in 1946. He published more than 550 works—books, papers, reviews—on a wide range of topics in ethnology, linguistics, history, and archaeology. His subject was the whole world of humans and their cultures, their pasts and their interconnections. As Heizer et al. wrote, “The search for cultural patterns obtrudes in papers on such diverse subjects as changes in women’s fashions, prehistoric South American art styles, Mohave epic tales, classificatory systems of relationship, arrow releases, basketry techniques and designs, aboriginal American Religious cults, or Romance languages.” His book Anthropology (1948) is a remarkable compendium of facts and ideas about the world’s peoples and cultures, and his massive edited enterprise, Anthropology Today, encompassed the vast range of the field as of 1952 (1953). Kroeber became known outside of anthropology as a result of Theodora Kroeber’s book Ishi in Two Worlds (1961), published soon after her husband’s death. The legacies of his linguistics and ethnography are invaluable to many California Indian groups and individuals In the light of the recent decision by the University of California, Berkeley to un-name Kroeber Hall it is particularly appropriate for the AAA, the ASA, the HOA, and GAD to offer a session to present a retrospective on the work of this important figure in the history of American anthropology.
PARTICIPANTS:
Herbert S. Lewis, Organizer, Paper Presenter
James Stanlaw, Chair, Paper Presenter Stanley Brandes, Paper Presenter
Jack Glazier, Paper Presenter
Nicholas Barron, Paper Presenter Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Paper Presenter
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Enduring Legacies of Ethnographic Field Schools, Part 1
Friday, 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Oral Presentation (In-Person)
ABSTRACT: This session brings together anthropologists who have led an ethnographic field school for approximately a decade or more to discuss and examine the enduring legacies and outcomes of their programs. The ethnographic field school is the most direct and practical example of hands-on training in cultural anthropology and in the teaching of the skills required to do ethnographic fieldwork. Field schools require their leaders to have heavy, day-to day involvement in the learning of those skills required for becoming effective anthropologists and ethnographers. These programs leave their mark not only on the students and but also on the communities in which they are held. While most field school participants do not go on to become professional anthropologists, all leave these field programs with valuable research and life skills applicable to careers in many fields. This session examines, with specific field school examples, how the ethnographic field school contributes to the career trajectories of its participants and how it affects the communities in which they have been held. Presenters in this session discuss the outcomes and legacies they perceive emanating from their informed understanding of what their programs have accomplished in human terms, as well as how their presence has had either intended or unintended consequences for the communities where they took place.
PARTICIPANTS:
James Tim M. Wallace, III, Organizer
Keri Brondo, Organizer, Chair
Suzanne M. Kent, Paper Presenter
A. Katherine Lambert-Pennington, Paper Presenter
Natalie Bourdon, Paper Presenter
Douglas W. Hume, Paper Presenter
Linda Easley, Paper Presenter
Quetzil E. Castaneda, Paper Presenter
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Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing: Exploring the future of multimodal-digital ethnography
Friday, 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Conversation / Debate (Virtual)
ABSTRACT: This conversation will bring to the meeting Professor Danny Miller (Univ College London), director of a newly completed multisited global ethnography study, the Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing (ASSA https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/assa/about/), and two post-doctoral researchers from the project, Xinyuan Wang and Charlotte Hawkins. The project consists of simultaneous 16-month field-based ethnographies conducted in ten field sites across the globe, from February 2018 to June 2019, focusing on mid-age and older adults. Smartphones and other digital technologies are now central to the experience of older people, whether in terms of accessing information about health, socializing with others, or organizing their lives during retirement. The researchers also explored how generational understanding and use of smartphones, especially for accessing health information and enabling translocal systems of care might be impacted by inequality. Smartphones are equally important in creating a new form of collaborative and comparative anthropology which will be represented by the eleven volumes the project is publishing. The conversation will be moderated by Maria Cattell and Jay Sokolovsky who have each logged in over 4 decades of traditional ethnographic research with Sokolovsky having recently published one of the first multimedia enabled ethnographies. In the midst of rapidly transforming translocal and transnational engagement of generations this conversation ultimately explores three grand issues: 1. As a successor to the global “Project A.G.E.” (Age, Generation and Experience), carried out in the 1980s, how does the ASSA Project move forward a comparative, cross-cultural understanding of older adulthood in the 21st Century? 2. Can the methodological efforts of the ASSA project properly transcend what Gabriele de Seta calls “the three lies of digital ethnography”? These are: illusions of the networked field-weaver, the eager participant-lurker and the expert fabricator. 3. How do the methods of the ASSA project inform anthropology about the possibilities of fieldwork and research dissemination in the age of COVID?
PARTICIPANTS:
Jay Sokolovsky, Organizer, Speaker/Moderator
Maria G. Cattell, Speaker/Moderator
Daniel Miller, Speaker
Xinyuan Wang, Speaker
Charlotte Hawkins, Speaker
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Information / Disinformation, II: Help from Anthropology
Friday, 2:00 PM-3:45 PM
Oral Presentation (Hybrid)
ABSTRACT: In the first iteration of this session, in Vancouver, we argued that the production of knowledge rests on the shaky ground that separates information from disinformation. We looked at aspects of theoretical models and of popular culture, underlined their shortcomings, as well as began to examine our responsibility in clarifying how anthropology can help develop trust in the possibility of truth. We asked ourselves whether our concern with the contextuality, and therefore relativity of truth has given theoretical justification to “alternative facts” narratives. This time, our object will be to peel the onion of the “alternative facts” narrative, which has become the foundation for the anything-goes posture on which we are mired and explore in some detail the avenues for the success of this narrative. How does it work? Why is it given credence? Can we unveil the motives that propel people to accept new information as evidence or to reject it? How can our anthropological tools help us in understanding this issue? Presenters in our panel deal with information from disparate geographic areas, Peru, Papua, New Guinea, the U.S., and with information derived from different domains, from ethnography to public policy to private dreaming. Mitchell, starts from the assumption that the use of misinformation has been endemic in situation of contrasting political motivation, which begs the question of our role as anthropologists: are we investigators of the truth or reporters of existing narratives? Similarly, Stewart & Strathern argue that alternative realities claiming validation are at the heart of misinformation and the role of anthropologists is to use the tools at our disposal, such as cognitive anthropological analysis. With similar concerns regarding the personal interpretation of public issues, Sherif invites us to be open to the ethnographic importance of dream states, seen here as windows on how we process “our hypermediatized public imaginaries.” Finally, Antoniello is unabashed in her critique of one evident trajectory of misinformation: the U.S. Government’s botched response to the COVID-19 crisis, which has ignored what anthropologists know about epidemics and the lessons that we can learn from them.
PARTICIPANTS:
Maria-Luisa Achino-Loeb, Organizer, Stephen Rea, Chair/Discussant
Robin Sheriff, Paper Presenter
Peter Benson, Discussant
William Mitchell, Paper Presenter
Patricia Antoniello, Paper Presenter
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Enduring Legacies of Ethnographic Field Schools, Part 2
Friday, 2:00 PM-3:45 PM
Oral Presentation (In-Person)
ABSTRACT: See Part 1 of session
PARTICIPANTS:
James Tim M. Wallace, III, Organizer, Paper Presenter
Keri Brondo, Organizer, Chair, Discussant Bill Roberts, Paper Presenter
Walter R. Adams, Paper Presenter
James H. McDonald, Paper Presenter
Sharon Gmelch, Paper Presenter
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Time to be Woke: Method in Historical Sciences, Standpoints, Critical Thinking
Friday, 2:00 PM-3:45 PM
Oral Presentation (In-Person)
ABSTRACT: In 1958, Willey and Phillips published Method and Theory in American Archaeology. It presented “unit concepts” for ordering data, and a five-stage “historical-developmental approach” for interpreting those classes and clusters of data. Binford gave lip service to Willey and Phillips’ line, “archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing” (p. 2), but his very limited ethnography is poor. Instead, he taught what he claimed was the scientific method, promoted by physicists involved in developing NSF as a Cold War weapon. Binford’s followers published Explanation in Archeology. An Explicitly Scientific Approach, 1971, accepting this premise of science as a unitary exercise, and practice in physics as exemplary. Archaeologists have ignored the 1970 magisterial rebuttal by the great paleontologist G. G. Simpson, laying out the method of historical sciences, and more recent publications by philosophers of science about method in historical sciences. We also do not see Critical Theory, as such, nor Critical Thinking as it is taught. Yet many archaeologists do, increasingly, work from a critical standpoint, often labeling their approach “decolonizing” (better extended as “postcolonial”). This contrasts with what Lekson terms Théorie, borrowing from French philosophes. Paying attention to the range of empirical data and rejecting antiquated paradigms empowering elite academics can free archaeology to respond to the real histories we encounter. We also acknowledge epistemic humility, realizing uncertainties. In this session, we present the method of historical sciences, and discuss from postcolonial and feminist standpoints‒which often overlap in archaeology‒work that we consider to successfully demonstrate how archaeology draws upon anthropology and other disciplines for inference to the best explanation.
PARTICIPANTS:
Alice Kehoe, Organizer, Chair, Paper Presenter
Maureen Meyers, Paper Presenter
Elizabeth Graham, Paper Presenter
Sarah Baires, Paper Presenter
Geoffrey Clark, Paper Presenter
Miriam Stark, Paper Presenter
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Unfinished Business! Part 1
Saturday, 10:15 AM-12:00 PM
Oral Presentation (Hybrid)
ABSTRACT: This session looks at an experience familiar to anthropologists: the unfinished project. Work we have yet to complete often weighs on our mind, because we intended to complete the task but were ultimately defeated by time, by other responsibilities, by forces beyond our control. Indeed, the reasons a project are left unfinished may differ, depending on the stage of our careers, on the priorities in anthropology at the time, or by a host of other reasons. Now as we consider our commitments and inclinations going forward, what role should completion of these projects take in the absorption of our limited time? The papers in this session consider such unfinished business. This may have been in a long-term field-site research or perhaps in a newly started project we had to leave for a while and always meant to return to. It could be ethnographic, conceptual, analytical – or a combination thereof, a manuscript half-finished that was abandoned for some reason now forgotten or a particular piece of research only half done. Such unfinished business preys on our conscience, because it was never written up, or it was dropped for reasons long forgotten, or was almost finished but put aside, perhaps temporarily, when circumstances forced us to move onto something else. This session offers the opportunity, in a relatively formal setting, to examine the whys and wherefores of this very common issue, to revisit the project itself, and possibly to provide the impetus for suggesting various ways of completing it.
PARTICIPANTS:
Susan Kenyon, Organizer
Jim Weil, Chair Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Paper Presenter
Jeffrey Ehrenreich, Paper Presenter
Judith Kempf, Paper Presenter
Moshe Shokeid, Paper Presenter
Ralph Bolton, Paper Presenter
William Mitchell, Discussant
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Unfinished Business! Part 2
Saturday, 2:00 PM-3:45 PM
Conversation / Debate (Virtual)
ABSTRACT: See Part 1 of session.
PARTICIPANTS:
Susan Kenyon, Organizer, Chair
Myrdene Anderson, Speaker
Anita Spring, Speaker
Kevin Kelly, Speaker
David Plath, Speaker
Jacqui Hill, Speaker
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ASA Activities at the 2020 AAA Meeting – Raising Our Voices
In the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the planned annual meeting of the AAA in St. Louis, MO, had to be cancelled. The prodigious efforts of the AAA Meetings Department and the annual program committee produced an innovative online alternative, Raising Our Voices, highlighting live-stream conversations, discussions, and debates. For further information about the overall program, go to the AAA website. See below to register.
We organized our own ASA events, beginning on Monday, November 9th, with the Business Meeting—most of which was devoted to a conversation with former AAA President Virginia Dominguez—followed by one panel the same day and another on Thursday, November 12th. See below for the titles, times, descriptions, and participants.
Business Meeting — Monday, November 9, at 1:00pm Eastern time (12:00 noon Central, 11 Mountain, 10:00am Pacific)
The “business” part will be short in order to devote most of the time to a “town hall” session with former AAA president Virginia Dominguez. She will offer her perspective on the roles of senior anthropologists regarding current local, national, and global challenges. She will then lead a discussion with your Q&A about how we can move forward together as engaged AAA members.
Voices of Experience in Social Justice Initiatives: Senior Anthropologists Discuss Precedents and Continuities in the Americas — Monday, November 9, at 5:00pm Eastern time (4:00pm Central, 3:00pm Mountain, 2:00pm Pacific)
Long histories of anthropological thought and action have contributed in significant ways to today’s struggles focused on obstacles to social equity. Panelists consider shifts in approaches to these concerns at different stages of their careers, including their involvement as social activists and public intellectuals. Participants: Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, Kathleen Fine-Dare, Ralph Bolton, Jean J. Schensul, Jim Weil (moderator)
Representing the History of American Anthropology — Thursday, November 12, at 5:00pm Eastern time (4:00pm Central, 3:00pm Mountain, 2:00pm Pacific)
With the growing body of scholarship on the history of anthropology, knowledge of the field before 1970 among younger anthropologists is rapidly disappearing. Panelists investigate what earlier anthropologists actually did and wrote and how their work corresponds to negative representations or, on the contrary, how it may have supported social justice. Participants: Herbert S. Lewis, Regna Darnell, Jack Glazier, Alice B. Kehoe, William P. Mitchell (moderator)
Bonus: Virtual Guided Tour of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site— The 2020 field trip had to be cancelled. Instead, senior archaeologist Bill Iseminger, with many years of experience working at Cahokia, has led and narrated a video tour. He and Alie Morgan of the museum staff prepared this virtual field trip especially for the Association of Senior Anthropologists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJC4B2pzBzQ&feature=youtu.be (It opens near the 5 minute mark, so move the slider back to start at the beginning.) For background see Alice Kehoe’s Cahokia and the Mississippian Period.
Registration for Raising Our Voices is quite reasonable ($50 for retired members) and not difficult. You can login at
https://www.americananthro.org/ROV_Pricing?navItemNumber=25804
Looking forward to our shared participation in this and subsequent activities of the Association of Senior Anthropologists!
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ASA Activities at the 2019 AAA Meeting in Vancouver
The Association of Senior Anthropologists presented a rich and varied program in Vancouver, with eight distinct events. Five were panels, three of which were traditional paper-sessions, another focused on visual imagery, and one was a celebratory session in honor of First Nation anthropologists. All were intended to challenge any lingering notion of a bounded ethnography or of static visual, historic representations and even of a bounded truth. Three other events were designed to cement the mutuality of interests and concerns of participants in our program: an interactive mentoring session between senior and junior anthropologists that was co-sponsored with the Association for Anthropology, Gerontology and the Life Course (AAGE); a harbor cruise and tour of 15 “labour heritage” sites; and our ever lively business lunch.
LIST OF EVENTS
Thursday, November 21
“The Lifespan of Ethnographic Reports: The Importance of Revisits (Part 1)” (3-0225)
8:00–9:45 a.m. West, Room 112
Paper Session Presenters: Moshe Shokeid, Mary E. Hegland, Mark S. Mosko, Maria G. Cattell, Stanley Brandes, Myrdene Anderson
“The Lifespan of Ethnographic Reports: The Importance of Revisits (Part 2)” (3-0565)
10:15 a.m.–12:00 p.m. West Room 112
Paper Session Presenters: Erika Loeffler Friedl, Sharon Gmelch, Frederick H. Damon, R. Thomas Rosin, John B. Page.
Discussants: H. Russell Bernard, James Tim Wallace, III
“Association of Senior Anthropologists (ASA) Business Meeting/Luncheon” (3-0645)
12:15–1:45 p.m. Offsite – Rogue Terrace, C –200 Burrard St
604-428-2555
“Harbour Cruise and Tour of BC/Vancouver Labour Heritage Sites” (3-0990)
2:00–6:00 p.m. Offsite – BC Labour Heritage Center
Friday, November 22
“Anthropology in and of the Life Course: An ASA & AAGE Mentorship Event” (4-0800)
2:00–3:45 p.m. East Room 12.
Organizers: James T. Wallace III, Celeste Pang
“Honoring First Nations’ Anthropologists” (4-1185)
4:15–6:00 p.m.
Paper Presenters: Jay Miller, Lucy Fowler Williams, Margaret Seguin Anderson, Marianne Ignace, Sergei Kan, Alice Kehoe
Saturday, November 23
“Conversations Across Generations: Photography Over the Years” (5-0785)
2:00–3:45 p.m. West Room 122
Presenters: Pablo Landa, Jeffrey Ehrenreich, Anita Spring, Malcolm Collier, Stanley Brandes, Sofia Pinedo-Padoch, Herbert Lewis
“INFORMATION / DISINFORMATION: The Shaky Ground of Knowledge Production” (5-1155)
4:15–6:00 p.m. West Room 118
Paper Presenters: Robert Marshall, Patricia Antoniello, Jonathan M. Marks, Susan Trencher, Stephen Reyna.
Discussants: Louise Lamphere, Maria-Luisa Achino-Loeb
PANEL HIGHLIGHTS
The two-part Thursday paper session, “The Lifespan of Ethnographic Reports: The Importance of Revisits,” picked up a theme that has been close to the heart of ASA members: the provisional nature of ethnography, given the ever changing condition of social life, hence the need for return visits to the field to enlarge our parameters of observation as much as possible. The papers themselves were the work of “veteran anthropologists” who have done just that: gone back to the field, observed the changes, and altered their conclusions and, perhaps, their perspectives.
Friday’s sessions included a mentoring workshop and a celebratory session reminding us of the work of earlier anthropologists. “Anthropology in and of the Life Course: An ASA & AAGE Mentorship” paired senior scholars whose work focuses on issues connected to aging and the life course with junior scholars in the same field, even graduate students. It was set up as a “speed-mentoring workshop” with pre-selected mentors and mentees sharing ideas and rotating to different participants. The object of the workshop was to help create networks taking advantage of the life/work experience of senior scholars and the novel ideas/interests of junior scholars.
“Honoring First Nations’ Anthropologists” then turned our gaze to the beginnings of anthropology on the North American continent, describing the substantive contributions of First Nations’ scholars, their role as consistent eyes on the ethnographic observation of life in this continent, and as interlocutors with anthropologists from elsewhere, notably Boas. Participants in this session lamented the oblivion to which the work of First Nations’ anthropologists has been relegated: hence the incentive for this celebratory session as “homage” to their forgotten work.
Saturday’s sessions included a heavily visual session, “Conversations Across Generations: Photography Over the Years,” intended to trace the changes in visual representation on which we have come to rely. Participants in this session presented images that made comparisons between early and current use of photography in the field and how it has changed even within each anthropologist’s career. Issues of technological change, globalization, and the consequent changes in field relationships and in the politics of representation were considered.
The second session, “INFORMATION / DISINFORMATION: The Shaky Ground of Knowledge Production” focused on the thorny, often disingenuous distinction between facts and interpretations. The central concern here was to consider ways to distinguish between the real, thoughtful existence of differing interpretations and the fabrication of “alt-facts” for self-interested purposes. Spanning biological, medical, and cultural anthropology, as well as the fields of linguistics and philosophy, these papers exhibited a common sentiment. We need to hold on to our trust in the importance of “relative truth” while not falling prey to the sentiment occasionally surfacing that truth is negotiable.
LABO(U)R HISTORY HARBO(U)R CRUISE
The ASA organized a field trip that was different from years past—a boat cruise through the historical heart of the wonderful city that is Vancouver. Participants learned about Vancouver’s history from the comfort of a paddle wheel boat, the MVP Constitution.
The boat was filled to capacity for a fascinating two-hour excursion into Vancouver’s rich and diverse labor history. Accompanied by guides from the British Columbia Labour Heritage Center, the tour followed the Burrard Inlet between downtown and North Vancouver. Sites visited are of significance to the workers’ heritage and working class struggle that commemorate the importance of labor unions, individuals, collective actions, and much more. Each story reflects the political, economic, and social conditions of the time. Many link interrelated events or illustrate causes that span decades, such as the labor movement’s efforts to prevent injury and death on the job.
The tour looked beyond the headlines to explore little-known details about important events, such as the Depression era “relief” Camps that generated the On-to-Ottawa Trek of 1935. Hundreds of unemployed workers climbed aboard freight trains on the Vancouver waterfront to take the demand of “Work and Wages!” to the federal government in Ottawa, Ont