Come to Albuquerque in 2020

November 1, 2019

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Come to Albuquerque in 2020

We hope that by now you have registered and submitted your presentation abstract for SfAA’s 80th Annual Meeting, to be held at the Hotel Albuquerque, March 17-21, 2020.  Next year’s theme—Cultural Citizenship and Diversity in Complex Societies—has certainly struck a chord. As Renato Rosaldo noted, cultural citizenship recognizes 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.” Submissions explore the variety of group efforts to negotiate and defend their cultural identities and how applied anthropologists and other social scientists address the needs of marginalized groups.

Sessions focus on such topics as: human rights and social justice; how internally displaced persons reconnect with their homelands; cultural citizenship and tourism; multispecies ethnographies;  environmental injustice; contested citizenship in higher education; teaching race and ethnicity; how indigenous scholars apply anthropology; cultural citizenship and academic identity; realizing global citizenship; digital technologies and cultural citizenship; New Mexico’s Hispano heritage and identity; intersectional approaches to disability; intersections between indigenous activism and museums; race, culture, and citizenship in Black communities; less common applications of business anthropology; negotiating culture in the rural opioid crisis; unions in academia; care and diversity in complex societies; community response to asylum seekers; representing diversity and minority voices in US national parks.  The list goes on and on, but you get the picture. SfAA 2020 offers a rich intellectual program.

The first day of the meeting, Tuesday, March 17, is designated as local/regional day. Drawing on the expertise of local and regional advocates and anthropologists who work with them, the sessions are organized into thematic tracks: Asylum-seekers and Refugees; Native Americans; Cultural Citizenship and Health; Cultural Citizenship and Environmental Justice; and Complexities of Cultural Citizenship. In addition there are a series of films on Native Americans and Immigrants. The films will be accompanied by discussions led by the filmmakers and and/or social scientists who were involved in their production. We know it can be difficult for attendees who are not from the immediate area to attend local day due to limited travel budgets and obligations at home and work. But this year’s local day focuses on matters of vital interest not only to Albuquerque and New Mexico, but also to those who live and work in the borderlands of the Greater Southwest and beyond. We hope you will make the effort to arrive in Albuquerque in time to attend the first day’s program. 

We are also developing several attractive tours, including Acoma Pueblo (“Sky City”); Laguna Pueblo Feast Day (March 19), Petroglyph National Monument; walking tours of Albuquerque’s Old Town; La Plazita Institute, a nonprofit, grassroots organization in Albuquerque’s South Valley that works with at-risk and previously incarcerated youth and their families; and Three Sisters Kitchen, a nonprofit community food space in downtown Albuquerque, which offers a food business training program, food and nutrition classes, and community cooking classes (all multi-lingual), and café.

The Albuquerque annual meeting is shaping up to be very exciting. Hotel rooms are going fast, so don’t wait too long to make your reservations. The Hotel Albuquerque is the host hotel. You can make your room reservation and receive the discounted room rate by going to https://bit.ly/31UWECy and using the group code 2003SOCIET. A limited number of rooms are also available at the adjacent Hotel Chaco and the nearby Casas de Suenos. See the SfAA website for more information. 

We’ll see you in Albuquerque!

©Society for Applied Anthropology 

P.O. Box 2436 • Oklahoma City, OK 73101 • 405.843.5113 • info@appliedanthro.org