|
|
|
|
|
2004 AAA Sessions in San Francisco Sponsored by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology (as of Sept. 24, 2004)
WEDNESDAY 11/17/04 Session: “Visual Art and Ethnographic Fieldwork” Session Abstract: Organizers/Chairs: Lydia N Degarrod, Ella Maria Ray Participants: Ella Maria Ray, Maria J Carozzi, Ayana Karanja, Lydia N Degarrod Discussant: Barbara Tedlock Program #: 0-045 Session #: 445 Time: 2:00 PM - 3:45 PM Room: TBA
Session: "So What?" The Anthropological Challenge of the 21st Century: Graduate Student Panel Session Abstract: "And what is THAT good for?" In the course of our careers, anthropologists may face similar inquiries when explaining the topics of their research to friends, family, and informants, yet even within disciplinary boundaries there is often disagreement about future directions, appropriate motivations, and personal responsibilities, the materiality of anthropology lost in a hall of smoke and mirrors. The anthropological challenge of the 21st century is to explain why who we are, what we study, and how we do so, matters. [** this will be added if we attain the sponsorships we are hoping for ** The Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) turns 30 this year, and to commemorate that anniversary, SHA has partnered with the National Association of Student Anthropologists (NASA) to offer a panel in which newly-minted researchers examine how anthropology mystifies, both within and outside the discipline.] With an exploration of specific challenges in fieldwork, ethnography, and practice alike, the session as a whole posits humanistic anthropology as a productive theoretical and ethnographic orientation, providing young ethnographers with a forum to think and write about their anthropological encounters and research decisions. Paper topics are based on the session theme, framing panelists' research choices and treatments in terms of a "so what" question. The panel brings a collection of young ethnographers into conversation on common anthropological obstacles. . Why research 'X'? . What written treatment suits/doesn't suit such a topic? . Why is it relevant to the academy? To non-academies? . How can the challenges presented by unconventional fieldsites or ethnographic subjects be resolved? . How should the sometimes uneasy relationship between the anthropologist and her/his conflicting environments, and colleagues or peers be charted and/or analyzed? . How can we address the complicated task of (and philosophy behind) writing about these encounters in accessible and sometimes unconventional ways? Drawing from in-progress and recent fieldwork experiences, research represents three regions (U.S., Central America, and Europe). Individual papers address the magic of ethnographic authority, the liminality of field research for a native anthropologist investigating her own spiritual community, multiple voicings of the justifications for researching both the complexities of transnational communities and the scientific process of donor insemination, and the anthropologist’s professional identity. The session as a whole remains attentive to the AAA Conference theme of "Magic, Science, and Religion," while exploring anthropology’s relevance and importance in today’s world. Organizers: Jessaca B Leinaweaver, Maria McMath Chair: Jessaca B Leinaweaver Participant(s): Maria Mcmath, Kathryn M Kluegel, Melinda Denham, Susan Harper-Bisso, Michael P Hickey, Amy Goldmacher Discussant(s): Jeanne Simonelli Program #: 0-075 Session #: 386 Time: 6:00 PM - 7:45 PM Room #: TBA
THURSDAY 11/18/04 Session: Ethnographic Fiction and Ethnographic Representation: The Migrant's Dilemma Session Abstract: Organizer/Chair: T J Knab Participants: Cid R Isbell, T J Knab Discussant(s): Duncan M Earle, Gary H Gossen Program #:1-023 Session #: 307 Time: 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM Room: TBA
Session: Performance, Tourism and Ethnographic Practice: An Exploration of the Work of Edward M. Bruner Session Abstract: In 1984, in his introduction to Text, Play and Story, Edward M. Bruner observed that cultural anthropology was changing. Bruner was a key player in what is now recognized as a revolution in the operative paradigms of our profession. As a result, concepts such as reflexivity, social practice, interpretive field, dialogic narration, representation, and performance are dominant theoretical perspectives in cultural anthropology today, and the anthropology of tourism itself is a major field of study. It is appropriate, twenty years after the intellectual groundswell began, to explore the influence of Edward M. Bruner through the multi-faceted directions of our own complementary current research. In this symposium the participants present papers on aspects of their own work that engage the humanistic anthropology advocated by Bruner, covering topics as diverse as the construction of self at heritage sites, authenticity in museums, cultural negotiation in the borderzones of travel, the global culture industry, transnational ethnography, and the increasing centrality of anthropology to the humanities overall. Organizer/Chair: Helaine Silverman Participants: Edie Turner, Nelson Graburn, Richard Handler, Martin F Manalansan IV, Dean MacCannell, Sally Price, Helaine Silverman, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Daphne Berdahl, Barbara A Babcock, Matti Bunzl Discussants: Alma Gottlieb, Edward M Bruner Session #: 204 Time: 1:45 PM - 5:30 PM Room: TBA
Session: Do That Voodoo/Vodou/Vodu You Do So Well Session Abstract: Organizers: Martha C Ward, Judy V Rosenthal Chair: Martha C Ward Participants: Judy V Rosenthal, Monica A Mann, Nadia Lovell, Elizabeth McAlister, Karen M Brown, Martha C Ward Program #: 1-127 Session #:184 Time: 4:00 PM - 5:45 PM Room:TBA
FRIDAY 11/19/04 Session (INVITED POSTER): Collaborative Anthropology: Ethnography as Practice With and In Communities in Latin America and Beyond Session Abstract: The struggle to survive amidst imposed models of development and modernization is a phenomenon that spans more than a century of change. Anthropologists and other social scientists working in the 21st century face a challenge of collaborating in their work with and in communities, coupled with the additional challenge of presenting that work in a way that is acceptable and beneficial to those whose lives we document. In the 21st century, a continued process of imposed change is occurring, though today it meets with more articulate and structured resistance as communities attempt to create their own visions of a viable future and their own construction of cultural identity. This poster session provides a perspective on the challenge of a dialogic research process and the ways in which our we must modify our practices of research and reporting. Text and images illustrate research and analyses concerning development, education health and identity especially in Latin America. Presenters discuss alternative ways of presenting the work, including narrative, audio productions and visual fieldnotes. Organizer/Chair: Jonathan P Skinner Participants: Duncan M Earle, Tatiana Schreiber, Andrea Baltazar, Patty Kelly, Carol Hendrickson, Andrea M Heckman, Jody Owens, Betty B Faust, Grace Bascope, Jeffrey Ehrenreich, Lori E Eldridge, Alison D Goebel Program#: 2-008 Session #: 474 Room #: TBA
Session (INVITED): Victor and Edith Turner’s Experimental Anthropology as “Engaged Learning”: Anthropological Contributions to Current Pedagogical Debates Session Abstract: Current discussions in higher education concern how to produce “engaged learning” in which “learning is the intended outcome” (not testing), and students receive a “practical education” that entices them to become “intentional learners.” Anthropological voices have been almost completely absent from this discussion, which has tended to emphasize new “learning technologies” – generally computer-based technologies - at the expense of human-centered teaching methods. Therefore the moment is right for recapturing, both for the discipline of anthropology and for general pedagogy, the theories and methods of experiential anthropology developed by Edith and Victor Turner and collaborators in the 1980s. During that decade, the Turners, along with Bruner, Schechner, and others, developed innovative theories and practices that merged ritual, theater, and ethnography into experiences intended to engage the participants in what we now call “embodied” learning. These experiences were intended to overcome the “dehumanizing” tendencies of anthropological texts. Using ethnography as the basic script, they experimented with the reenactment of social dramas or rituals to aid students’ understanding of how people in other cultures experience the richness of their social existence. The Turners hosted their famous ritual reenactments at their home near the University of Virginia. These exercises were highly theoretically-informed by the theories of liminality, social drama, structure and anti-structure, reflexivity, play, and so on. Unfortunately, this creative moment in the history of the discipline subsided without a widespread impact on teaching methods either inside or outside of anthropology. The current nationwide interdisciplinary emphasis on new kinds of “engaged learning” provides a fruitful moment to recover these experiments and put them forward as a distinctly anthropological contribution to these pedagogical debates, shaped by distinctly anthropological theories. In order to further develop the theory and practice of experiential anthropology, this panel brings together presenters who have utilized Turnerian theories in different ways as part of the educational process. Frese organized an Anglo-American wedding ritual in one of the Turners’ seminars, with the faculty and students cast as kin of the bride and groom. She regularly includes ritual performances in her classes, including Mayan, New Age Religion, and New Age Drumming Rituals. Brownell was an undergraduate in the Turners’ seminar and later conducted her first ritual reenactment at the University of Washington in 1992, where Johnson was one of her students; the practice of ritual reenactments was thus preserved through a line of undergraduate transmission (evidence for its impact) as they have both continued to use it in their classrooms. Fjord is the most recent generation of Virginia Ph.D.s to carry on the tradition. Reidhead, in his Magic, Religion, and Science class, conducts a group project in which students invent their own religion, including an initiation rite. Rounds presents a perspective from Museum Studies with his use of Turnerian theories in his design for a Museum of Creativity. In sum, this panel seeks to reclaim the human-centered, creative potential of liminality and anti-structure for the educational process. Organizers: Susan Brownell, Michelle C Johnson Chairs: Susan Brownell Participants: Pamela R Frese, Susan Brownell, Michelle C Johnson, Lakshmi Fjord, Van A. Reidhead, Jay Rounds Program #: 2-133 Session #: 348 Time: 8:00 - 9:45 AM Room # TBA
Session (Award Ceremony): Award-Winning Work in Humanistic Anthropology: Readings from this Year’s Prize winners from the Victor Turner, Fiction, Poetry, and Student Paper Prize Competitions Session Abstract: As anthropologists and scholars, we undertake years of fieldwork, study, and analysis. We are adept at reporting on these activities, syntheses, and discoveries at professional meetings and through scholarly journals, monographs and books. We are each other’s audience--in a sense, preaching to the converted. Yet the valuable insights that come out of the work that we do should reach beyond the scientific arena. To do this, our writing needs to be accessible, readable, and at times, passionate. This session honors the best in ethnographic writing and expression. The winners of the Victor Turner Award for ethnography, the Society for Humanistic Anthropology’s Poetry and Fiction competitions and Student Paper Prize read from their award winning works. In addition, an open mike welcomes scheduled and unscheduled readings of ethnographic poetry. Organizer: Alma Gottlieb Participants: Michelle C Johnson, Ivan A Brady, Kirin Narayan, Barbara A Babcock Program #: 2-112 Session #: 657 Time: 4:00 PM - 5:45 PM
Business Meeting Program #: 2-150 Session #: 567 Time: 6:15 PM - 7:30 PM Room: Union Square 14
SATURDAY 11/20/04. Session (INVITED): Magic, Science, and Religion: Celebrating Thirty Years of Humanistic Perspectives Session Abstract: What difference does a humanistic perspective make in trying to understand magic, science and religion? Reciprocally, what do magic/science/religion have to say to humanism? Humanistically oriented anthropologists have entered into intellectually productive conversations with more scientifically oriented colleagues approaching these topics, probing and crossing the deep crevices linking magic, science and religion, always with provocative results. Recently, humanistically oriented scholars have actively engaged with issues surrounding power, economy, and practice, thereby challenging the metaphoric "hard"/"soft" divide that once threatened to cleave the discipline. Moreover, humanistic anthropologists also cross the we/them divide, becoming some of the most engaged supporters of symmetrical, collaborative anthropology. Still others have seen themselves as scientists first without losing their commitment to creativity in understanding the human experience. And, many also move comfortably across our sub disciplinary divides, analyzing the contemporary human experience through an understanding of the past. In this session, we explore a variety of "ways of knowing" to stimulate a series of productive conversations across these perspectives and paradigms. Presentations range from historiographic work on early anthropologists to retrospective analyses of ethnographic studies and their forms, to the place of IRBs in mediating or maintaining the science/humanism distinction. In the spirit of humanism, we also present alternative genres of ethnographic writing as complementary ways of reporting social science research. We bring together humanists, scientists, poets, linguists and bioarcheologists, weaving together the multiple paradigms that often divide our discipline and reminding us of the humanistic lesson that all anthropological works engage in their own fictions. Organizers: Frederic Gleach, Duncan M Earle Chair: Robert A Benfer Participants: Thomas Buckley, Paul Stoller, Rena Lederman, Melisa S Cahnmann Discussants: James J McKenna, Louanna Furbee, Robert A Benfer Program #: 3-034 Session #: 393 Time: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM Room #: TBA
Return to Society for Humanistic Anthropology Page
|
|
|
Return to AAA
Sections/Interest Groups Page |
