SUNTA Annual Report, Nancy Foner, President September 2002

SUNTA Annual Report
Nancy Foner, President
September 2002

This has been a wonderful year for SUNTA in that our membership continues to grow, City and Society is flourishing under our new editor, and, as in the past, we are attracting excellent Board members. Our financial status continues to be very sound.

Ever since the society broadened its scope, from urban anthropology to urban, national, and transnational/global anthropology, membership has grown steadily, and this past year was no exception. SUNTA membership is at an all-time high. In August 2002, the membership stood at 694, up from 617 a year before. (This includes 358 regular members, 306 student members, 3 joint members, 5 associate members, 17 international members, and 5 life members.)

What could have been a traumatic and very difficult event for SUNTA - the unexpected and abrupt resignation of Roger Sanjek from his position as president-elect shortly after the 2001 AAA meetings - did not, in fact, cause any disruption. For one thing, Roger Sanjek continued to serve as chair of the program committee and as chair of the Leeds Prize Committee. For another, Robert Rotenberg - who has long been involved in SUNTA affairs and, in fact, ran for president in the last election - agreed to step in to fill the vacancy. Bob Rotenberg has thus had almost a year to familiarize himself with the workings of SUNTA, and will officially assume the role of president at the 2002 AAA meetings in New Orleans.

SUNTA also welcomes three other new Board members: Farha Ghannam once again joins the Board, this time as treasurer; Susan Greenbaum, a former SUNTA secretary, is our new president-elect; and Don Nonini, is our new councilor.

Emily Schultz has completed her first year as editor of City and Society, which, in the tradition established by editor emeritus Jack Kugelmass, continues to publish articles on a broad range of subjects that reflect the wide interests of our members. In the first issue under Emily's editorship, there was a special section that grew out of the interlocutor session on the work and influence of Charles Keil; this issue also included an essay about Hindu temples in India and two short pieces by Leeds Prize winners, Setha Low and Karen Tranberg Hansen. An upcoming issue will include articles on Los Angeles, Nicaraguan activism and transnational identity, and shopping in the Negev.

The number of subscribers to City and Society has held steady, at 45 in July 2002. Together with the increase in membership, this means that the journal's circulation is around 740. Kelly Alley has been working on getting the articles cited in various indexes, and this is a critical issue that, it is hoped, will be resolved in the coming year.

The program committee, under Roger Sanjek's leadership (Petra Kuppinger and Terese Lawinksi are the other members), put together an excellent program for the 2002 AAA meetings. We are sponsoring three invited sessions: "Immigration as Divorce Strategy, Marriage as Immigration Strategy," organized by Rachel Reynolds; "Unsung Pasts, Unimaginable Futures, and the Ongoing Negotiations of Human Rights: Japanese Transnational Migrants and their Descendants in a Globalized World, organized by Nobuko Adachi (a double panel co-sponsored with the General Anthropology Division); and "Sites of Trauma/Places of Memory," organized by Setha Low and Geoffrey White (co-sponsored with the Society for Psychological Anthropology). Sharon Nagy organized a poster session which we are sponsoring: "Using the City as Classroom: Practical and Pedagogical Issues in Experiential and Service Learning."

Rae Bridgman reports that the URBANTH-L list is alive and well, with 397 subscribers; our Webmaster, Len Purcell, continues to update the site which has averaged about 1820 visitors per month since January 2002 - a huge increase from last year, when there were about 400 visitors a month. This significant change in site viewership is most likely a result of the shift from the AAA server to our own SUNTA. Org domain name, an early effort to increase the site's prominence in the major search engines, and an ongoing campaign to have the site link listed on related web pages. News items were updated about once a month.

Our Leeds Prize continues to be an important book award, and will be presented this year to Catherine Lutz for her book, Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century (Beacon Press) at the 2002 Business Meeting. This is also the first year that SUNTA will offer a student essay award, the committee having been chaired by Don Robotham. The essay award, to be presented at the Business Meeting, will go to Ben Chappell for his paper, "Lowriders, Police and Urban Space." (Three honorable mentions-to Derek Pardue, Beth Ann Buggenhagen, and Eleana Kim -- will also be cited.)

With our journal, awards, website and list-serve, AN column, AAA sessions, and growing membership, SUNTA is doing well - and, once again, my thanks to all on the Board for their support and good work.

About AAA / Join AAA / Jobs & Careers / AAA Meetings / AAA Publications
Sections & Interest Groups / Staff Directory / Anthro Links / Support AAA

Questions or comments? We want to hear from you!
Contact us / AAA Privacy Policy