From the 2024 Program Chair

Doing the Work of Transformation in the Land of Enchantment: The 2024 Annual Meeting in Santa Fe

A.J. Faas
aj.faas@sjsu.edu
Professor of Anthropology, San José State University
Annual Meeting Program Chair for 2024 in Santa Fe, NM

For the 2024 Annual Meeting, the Program Committee and I have prioritized broadening participation among historically underrepresented populations and communities disproportionately affected by critical issues we address. This work remains urgent as knowledge production and exchange in social science continues to be plagued by structural inequalities. Evidence reveals that anthropological associations in the United States continue to produce decidedly White spaces that exclude and alienate Black, Brown, and Indigenous scholars, practitioners, and potential collaborators (Schuller and Abreu 2023; Pandian 2019; Ntarangwi 2010). A limited number of programs produce tenure-track faculty at major universities (Kawa et al. 2019), and many others are marginalized though citation practices (Smith et al. 2021). Since the COVID-19 pandemic, travel and accommodation costs have risen significantly (French and Kemmis 2023). Students, early career scholars, and practitioners find attendance increasingly out of reach, especially those people who are first generation college students or from groups historically underrepresented in professional anthropological activities.

For this meeting, we are doing the work of transformation in four key areas. The first is crafting a program theme—Enchantment and Transformation—which invites contributors to the annual meeting to demonstrate and reflect on their efforts to transform the relations, discourses, and practices of social science for social and environmental justice. The second is to secure funding from the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Program (award # 2333784) to expand participation in the Annual Meeting. This was a fun opportunity to work with my friend and colleague Kiran Jayaram (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of South Florida), whom, it is worth noting, I met at what was both of our first Annual Meetings in 2007. Kiran is the Principal Investigator and took leadership on the grant, and together we crafted a proposal to fund travel and accommodations for students, scholars, practitioners, and community members who belong to one or more of the following groups: (1) historically underrepresented in anthropological sciences; and/or (2) disproportionately affected by critical issues in the Annual Meeting program (see more below). To the extent possible (given cost and visa limitations), we will also increase the number of international students, practitioners, and scholars who participate in the SfAA meetings.

The third area in which we are advancing the transformation agenda laid out in the theme is to develop programming around critical issues affecting local and regional communities, and others with more global impact, and we are doing so with attention to the systemic distribution of their impacts and the power and knowledge to prevent, respond to, and recover from them. We have a great many sessions and topics under development, and we have targeted support for several of these with NSF funding, but here I’d like to introduce some of the exciting programming currently in the works:

Local and regional climate change and water shortage initiatives. The 2024 Annual Meeting coincides with the release of the fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA). In an effort to foster the development of reciprocal knowledge exchange, members of the 2024 program committee are building several sessions featuring SfAA members who contributed to the NCA and local and regional leaders and community-based organizations working on climate and water initiatives. We will also have a panel based on the upcoming special issue of Human Organization on the anthropology of water.

Sessions with people affected and displaced by the 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire. The 2022 Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon wildfire was the largest and most destructive fire in the history of New Mexico. The Program Committee is working with local researchers, community leaders, and residents affected by the fire to develop sessions addressing root causes, prevention, response, and recovery.

Health issues and practices with immigrant women. This session is based on a local research project about health issues among immigrant women from Mexico. The session will feature a half dozen community researchers and five or six of the eighty women participants in the study, who will share a selection of their creative works with stories about them as a way to model alternative ways of conceptualizing a research collaboration and presentation.

Local arts and Indigenous artisans. The Program Committee is working with local practitioners, museums, and the New Mexico and Navajo Historic Preservation Offices to feature programming focused on Diné textiles and the increasingly endangered tradition of Chimayo weavers. Sessions will feature ongoing efforts to sustain these traditions with a combination of internships and museum programs.

Joy in the lives of people with disabilities. As the biomedical and biotechnological industries grow at a rapid pace, people with disabilities often feel dehumanized through quotidian interactions with loved ones and healthcare workers, and a broader public that tends to imagine living with disability as synonymous with suffering. These sessions will include creative activities of people with disabilities to call attention to the importance of how humanizing (inter)actions are an essential part of life.

Social science collaboration with Indigenous groups. This session will be co-led by Indigenous leaders and researchers at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE-Southwest). It will focus on approaches to collaboration with anthropologists working in different sectors (e.g., healthcare, cultural resource management) and initiate conversations about participatory methods and tribal consultation.

Repatriation of Indigenous remains and artifacts. The repatriation of Indigenous remains and artifacts remains a critical issue in Indigenous, anthropological, and museum affairs. We will have at least two sessions on this topic, both co-led by local researchers and Indigenous leaders, to address both new and abiding concerns and controversies.

Child health and wellness in New Mexico. This session will be led by local medical anthropologists working with schools and community-based organizations addressing critical issues in child wellness in New Mexico. Issues proposed include school-based collaboration, school safety, sexual health, behavioral health, justice, homelessness, and youth engagement.

Critical issues affecting LGBTQ+ communities. The rise of transphobia and attacks on LGBTQ+-inclusive education and healthcare have prompted critical attention on gender-affirming care and strategies for education and organizational and social inclusion for a range of sexual and gender identities. We have several sessions devoted to these issues.

The future of reproductive care. Women around the world still struggle to obtain dignified reproductive care. In the US, a recent decision by the US Supreme Court has led to a spate of state-level restrictions to reproductive decision making for women, which may have harrowing ripple effects.

Future of Higher Education in America. Higher education in the US and elsewhere faces singular challenges in the 21^st century. A case recently decided by the US Supreme Court (e.g., Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard) stands reshape higher education admissions. Legislation in several states has disrupted teaching and learning about systemic inequality and the history and contemporary incidence of injustice, as well as initiatives to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education.

SfAA Global initiatives. As travel and technology make the world increasingly aware of our interconnectedness, projects that bring people together equitably from various parts of the world stand to make major contributions. In addition to the Bert Pelto Award session, SfAA Global will organize a session featuring contributions from scholars and practitioners from around the world.

Disasters. In a world where the frequency and intensity of disasters has been steadily increasing and solutions have failed to keep pace or address root causes, disaster social science grows more critical daily. We will welcome the podcast team from Disasters: Deconstructed who, in addition to hosting a session of their own, will be recording disaster-themed sessions and helping us expand the accessibility of the Annual Meeting program beyond the paywall. We will have a session on inclusive collaborations necessary to address coastal communities facing relocation pressures, sea-level rise, rebuilding hopeful landscapes, and another featuring recent ethnographies transforming how we engage with ontological, epistemological, infrastructural, and institutional problems affecting collaboration to adapt to, prevent, and recover from disasters and climate change.

Our fourth area is to increase skills-based programming to support training for students, scholars, and practitioners at all stages of their careers. Some of this programming will be in paid workshops (we are working on keeping costs down) and others will be sessions accessible to the public on Local Day and to all Annual Meeting attendees throughout the program. Some highlights include two offerings by Elizabeth Chin, Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist: a workshop on writing and publishing in anthropology for students and scholars and practitioners in all phases of their careers, and a local day session with local children and community members, "Hey, Do You Want to Make a Robot?" with her collaborators Ben Caldwell and Casey Anderson. We’ll have a workshop on storytelling in anthropology provided by Practicing Anthropology Editor-in-Chief, Lisa Jane Hardy. And we are working closely with the Student Committee to develop student-centric programming, including mentoring events. The National Science Foundation Research Methods CAMP will host a roundtable of faculty mentors and recent alumni about contemporary methods training, and the Anthropology Career Readiness Network will present finding on career training in a sample of undergraduate and graduate anthropology programs. We’ll have several sessions on job seeking and employment in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and at least one on funding social science research and applied projects. The program will also feature a “Tools Café,” where participants will showcase a range of innovative tools for social science research, communication, and collaboration. 

Finally, while I have you, do me a favor and take a look at the stellar Program Committee we have assembled for the 2024 Annual Meeting. Putting together the Annuel Meeting program requires plenty of time and effort that unfortunately often goes unacknowledged. I think the team deserves recognition for their efforts. If you’ve got some ideas for the 2024 program, please feel free to contact me or other members of the Committee. And when we’re together in Santa Fe next spring, be sure to thank the team. I’m looking forward to seeing you all there.

References

French, Sally, and Sam Kemmis. 2023. “Travel Inflation Report: June 2023.” Nerdwallet. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/travel-price-tracker. Accessed June 12, 2023.

Kawa, Nicholas C., Jose A. Clavijo Michelangeli, Jessica L. Clark, Daniel Ginsberg, and Christopher McCarty. 2019. “The Social Network of US Academic Anthropology and Its Inequalities.” American Anthropologist 121 (1): 14–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13158

Ntarangwi, Mwenda. 2010. Reversed Gaze: An African Ethnography of American Anthropology. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Pandian, Anand. 2019. A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times. Durham: Duke University Press.

Schuller, Mark, and Christina Abreu. 2023. “Reproducing the ‘white public space’ in anthropology faculty searches.” American Anthropologist 125: 186– 193.

Smith, Christen A., Erica L. Williams, Imani A. Wadud, Whitney NL Pirtle, and Cite Black Women Collective. 2021. “Cite black women: A critical praxis (a statement).” Feminist Anthropology 2(1): 10-17.