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From the January 2006 Anthropology News Call For Papers, 105th Annual Meeting American Anthropological Association Critical Intersections/Dangerous Issues San Jose McEnery Convention Center - Marriott San Jose - Hilton San Jose and Towers San Jose, CA, Nov 15–19, 2006
Maria D Vesperi
Anthropology has reached a critical intersection in its history and heritage as a discipline. This year’s theme, “Critical Intersections/Dangerous Issues,” provides opportunities to explore and evaluate both new and established links among increasingly specialized areas within the field. Two standard definitions of the term “critical” are particularly apt: “characterized by careful analysis” and “designating a point at which change occurs.” We invite papers that showcase collaborative efforts to analyze pressing issues of archaeological, biological, cultural, biocultural, medical and linguistic concern by producing new intersections of knowledge. We also invite explicit critiques of such collaborations by those who are familiar with the potential dangers of crossing conceptual, institutional, pedagogical and political boundaries. Some intersections have already proven to be flashpoints, as intellectual stakeholders collide over issues of representation, anthropology’s identity as a science, ethics, relevance and responsibility to a broader public. Such collisions are not unprecedented; they have been endemic to the discipline since its inception. Yet the friction that occurred at the intersection of a San Francisco picket line and the 2004 annual meeting was unique in the immediacy of its impact on everyone within the AAA’s electronic network. Even those with no plans to attend the meeting found opportunity to examine where they were positioned as anthropologists within a large, intellectually diverse professional organization—and where this group was, should, or could be positioned as their representative to the nation and to the world, where we are implicated in ongoing conflicts as anthropologists and as citizens. The challenges facing human populations today in every arena of human biology, culture and material production seem unparalleled in depth and scope. These challenges are themselves the dangerous results of critical, often uncharted intersections, yet none fall beyond the purview of anthropological research and our combined expertise. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, new findings in archaeology challenged long-held assumptions about human origins and human impacts on environments. Anthropologists engaged issues of eugenics and race within the academy and in highly politicized public fora. Some were moved to action as ethnographic research took shape in an era marked by genocide—biological, cultural and linguistic. Warfare, oppression and resistance led to diasporic population shifts, destabilizing rifts in values and practices, contested identities. Accelerating ecological devastation was linked to new technologies and the globalizing economies that fueled them. New work environments etched racialized and gendered inequalities on the bodies of men, women and children. New class boundaries emerged. Innovations in medicine, sanitation and food production meant increased life spans for some, while others faced malnutrition, degraded environments and unchecked disease. Special thanks to AAA President Alan Goodman and to the 2006 Program Committee for their enthusiastic support in helping to develop this year’s theme. CONTACT
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