Evidence, Accident, Discovery: AAA Annual Meeting Highlights Racism, Border-Crossers and Environmental Justice (original) (raw)
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Here I highlight anthropology that engaged socially relevant issues and pushed the boundaries of public discussions in 2012. In "Debating KONY 2012," I examine debates surrounding the viral video and anthropologists' role in illuminating the complexities of globalized conflicts, neocolonialist ideologies, and relationships among people of the world. In "Anthropologists Are the 99%!" I consider the role of anthropologists in the Occupy Movement, both as protest participants and as mediators who have shaped the movement's impression on the public. With "UndocuAnthropology," I highlight how anthropologists have built bridges between immigrant and native-born communities, influenced immigration policy, and advocated for immigrant rights in the public sector. I conclude with "Already Gone Native," where I consider the relationship between academia and the wider world in the current period. Together, this essay illuminates how anthropology made key contributions to some of the most widely discussed social issues in the United States of 2012. [public anthropology, KONY 2012, Occupy, immigration, applied anthropology]
An Interview with AAA President-Elect Goodman
Anthropology News, 2004
In the recent past, human biology in anthropology was typically theorized as separate from-even in tension with-culture. In contrast, by further theorizing the social, political, and ecological processes through which what I call "cultural-biologicals" dialectically come into being, I foreground the restlessness and site specificity of human biology. In this article, I highlight research of three junior colleagues to propose two general processes connecting culture to biology: (1) through culturally specific readings of biological variables that, in turn, have biological consequences, and (2) through systems of global and local stratification that "get under the skin." Anthropology is well positioned to follow the diverse pathways through which forms of stratification such as racism, sexism, and class inequalities seep into our biological beings, influencing states of nutrition, stress, and health, as well as ecology and culture. I show that biology does not stand still. By highlighting some of the restlessness of biological processes, I hope to move anthropology to reconsider a more complex, site-specific, and dialectical approach to human biology.
Race and diversity in U.S. Biological Anthropology: A decade of AAPA initiatives
American journal of physical anthropology, 2018
Biological Anthropology studies the variation and evolution of living humans, non-human primates, and extinct ancestors and for this reason the field should be in an ideal position to attract scientists from a variety of backgrounds who have different views and experiences. However, the origin and history of the discipline, anecdotal observations, self-reports, and recent surveys suggest the field has significant barriers to attracting scholars of color. For a variety of reasons, including quantitative research that demonstrates that diverse groups do better science, the discipline should strive to achieve a more diverse composition. Here we discuss the background and underpinnings of the current and historical dearth of diversity in Biological Anthropology in the U.S. specifically as it relates to representation of minority and underrepresented minority (URM) (or racialized minority) scholars. We trace this lack of diversity to underlying issues of recruitment and retention in the ...
Private, 2022
[This letter was originally addressed to members of the American Library Association (ALA) and is intended to address current issues of race and racism.] The endeavor of any club, society, association, academic, religious, institutional, state or federal government pursuit is essentially the same in terms of declaration, they all want to solve problems. As information professionals concerned with the facts and opposed to misinformation, disinformation, and pseudo scientific information, it follows that our larger concern should be with the tangible; we are supposed to be the proprietors of tangible facts. The facts themselves are not absolutes; the facts themselves are not good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral, they just are... What we make of them is the real differentiator. As an explicit matter of intellectual freedom, we must first define freedom along with belief and responsibility: We are free to believe whatever we want but we are alone responsible for said belief. It follows that we want to understand belief as the thing that gives way to what we think, say, and do. Ultimately, what we do is the issue at hand. And where does the belief that gives way to what we think, say, and do come from? The same place bias comes from: our life circumstances. Bias is human nature.
On January 28-29, 2016, at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, the Canadian Studies Program sponsored a conference, “Fossil Fuels and Radical Sovereignties: Boardrooms, Blockades, and Jurisdictional Struggles over Oil and Gas Development in ‘North America,’” that dealt with major current issues relating to the law and the environment with a particular emphasis on the rights of First Peoples, frequently described by the terms, Aboriginal or Indigenous. Due to work, I missed several of the presentations, but I was able to hear many of the papers and engage in conversations, observations, and raise questions with several of the presenters and attendees. While the conference presenters showed real concern for justice toward the environment and First Peoples and several of the papers offered excellent summaries of recent relevant social action and legal cases, they lacked references to the social sciences of the law relevant to these events and cases. Instead of using this extensive literature to interpret their material, the presenters frequently substituted an analytical concept more derivative of identity politics than the social sciences. Thus I critically review several issues of interest to social scientists, by focusing on perhaps the least ideological of the papers with a more in-depth reference to concepts of major researchers in the areas of social sciences, the law, the environment, and First Peoples.
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2014
Fighting for Reliable Evidence is an incredibly powerful book, full of information that graduate schools do not teach and that would take a lifetime to learn on the job. Readers shadow the narrators-Judith Gueron, one of the founding employees and now President Emeritus of MDRC, and Howard Rolston, a long-time senior civil servant in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)-as they share their intersecting professional journeys in service of improving the welfare of our nation and its people. Over a 40-year period that began in 1974, a small band of warriors from the philanthropic, policy, and research communities, including Gueron and Rolston, fought and won many battles in a war to improve the availability and use of reliable evidence about what does and does not work to address the needs of poor and vulnerable populations. By shadowing the authors, readers learn the distinction between reliable and unreliable evidence and between evidence that is and is not useful for improving the development, implementation, and management of public policies. Readers also will gain an appreciation of the challenges to and rewards from strategic investments in generating such evidence. The vision, commitment, and grit of a relatively few individuals, including the authors, were critical in moving us from a world in which empirical evidence was largely absent from the policy process to one in which the federal government is now experimenting with performance partnerships and increasingly often considering the extent and reliability of evidence in its policy deliberations (Haskins & Baron, 2014; Mervis, 2013). However, as the title of the book suggests, the war has not been won. There is still a dearth of reliable evidence to guide policy decisions. Importantly, this book demonstrates well the feasibility of generating reliable evidence across a wide range of settings by using social experiments and the power of successful experiments for accelerating the accumulation of evidence. The story is rooted in the history of the use of social experiments to identify fixes for what, over the second half of the 20th century, was widely regarded as a seriously flawed welfare system. The system cost too much and did too little to incentivize and support poor or otherwise struggling individuals and families to improve their social and economic circumstances. As Gueron and Rolston explain, the beauty of experiments is that they largely sidestep big arguments about the appropriateness of the methodology used in and the credibility of findings from the "plenty of demonstrations, evaluations, and studies of welfare and employment and training programs..." (p. 11).
Association of Black Anthropologist
Anthropology News, 2000
SUSAN D GIl.I.ESPIE, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR RPA is Topic of AD Open Forum The AD Executive Committee invites archaeologists to participate in an Open Forum immediately following the AD Business Meeting and preceding the Distinguished Lecture at the Nov AAA Meeting. The topic will be the Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA). Informal presentations will be made by KPA President Donald Hardesty (U Nevada, Reno) and President-Elect Michael A Glassow (U California, Santa Barbara). The stated purpose of the RPA is to advance professionalism in archaeology by identifying archaeology as a profession and qualified archaeologists as professionals, encouraging high standards in the training and performance of archaeologists and administering grievance procedures to address questions of compliance. Related topics addressed by speakers and the audience may include the changing nature of professional associations within anthropology, relationships between academic and practicing archaeologists and ethical issues. All All members and others who share these interests are encouraged to attend and join in the discussion. For more information on RI'A visit www.rpanet.org. Thinking Ahead to Washington 2001 In less than a year proposals will be due for the 2001 AAA meeting in Washington, 11C from Nov 28-llec 2. It is not too early for our east coast members especially to think about topics for regionally-oriented sessions, papers and posters. Complete information will appear in the Jan 2001 AN.