From the Program Chair

August 1, 2019

2020 Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology

March 17-21, 2020

Dear Colleagues and Students,

As you probably know, the next SfAA annual meetings will be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 17-21, 2020.

The theme of this meeting, Cultural Citizenship and Diversity in Complex Societies, offers a space to address the issues facing cultural minorities, indigenous peoples, immigrants, and other marginalized groups in complex societies. Anthropologists have recognized that cultural citizenship entails the “right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without compromising one’s rights to belong” (Rosaldo 1994:57). These times now bring these issues home to all of us, as anthropologists and as citizens. New Mexico, and the Southwest, provide an ideal context to learn more, to discuss, and to address the complexities we now face. We need to examine the issues of cultural citizenship as it plays out in education, access to economic opportunities and medical care, voting rights, human rights, health, immigration, food sovereignty, cultural sovereignty, language conservation, environmental justice, and more. We are looking forward to sessions on Local Day (Tuesday, March 17, 2020) that situate these issues within the context of New Mexico and the US-Mexico Border. In addition, some of the local and regional tours planned for this meeting will focus on the meeting’s theme.

We hope to bring together anthropologists and other applied social scientists and humanists to consider these issues, both within the regional context and more broadly in the challenges faced by marginalized peoples around the world. In this vein, I would like to broaden our participation at these meetings. I encourage participants to organize sessions, but also I encourage those interested in presenting papers and/or participating in workshops to contact me, as program chair, individually. We want to bring in students, professional anthropologists, community activists, etc., who may have specific insights and knowledge to contribute. I am more than happy to assist in bringing together individuals into organized sessions so that we can make our discussions and panels as fruitful as possible.

If you have an idea for a paper and are looking for a session, if you have an idea for a workshop and need a few more other participants, please contact me directly at lstanfor@nmsu.edu or 575-646-6092.

Looking forward to seeing you all in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March 2020.

Best regards,

Lois Stanford, Cultural Anthropology Professor and 2020 SfAA Program Chair