Officers and Members of the Executive Board
Officers: Mary Anglin (Chair), Florence Babb (Chair-Elect), Cheryl Mwaria (Secretary), and Pamela Stone (Treasurer)
Members of the Executive Board: Evelyn Blackwood, Nandini Gunewardena, Susan Hyatt, Debra Martin, and Laury Oaks. Jessica Cattelino is the student representative on the AFA Board

Non-elected Positions
AFA Listserve Coordinator: Kathleen Sterling
AFA Program Co-Chairs: Dorothy Hodgson and Rosemary Joyce
AFA Website Coordinator: Kathleen Baker
AN Editors: Megan Sinnott and Rebecca Upton
Voices Editor: Susan Hyatt

1. Accomplishments, January 1-December 31, 2004

Membership numbers reported through November 2004

The AFA reported 911 members in November 2004. This figure includes 497 regular members, 387 student members, and 27 retired members. The numbers represent an overall increase, in addition to growth in all membership categories, since November 2003. The highest membership figures were reported in September 2004, with a slight decline since that time.

I concur with my colleagues from other sections who attribute declining membership, in part, to the increasing cost of membership to the American Anthropological Association and the problems with the Fall 2004 meetings. Thus, while the AFA increased its membership during the reporting period, doubtless these factor limited our growth.

Financial Balance

Net Assets (1/04) $11,907.57
Revenue (11/30/04) $ 9,471.96
Expenditures (11/30/04) $ 4,213.82
Net Assets at End of Period $17,165.71

Publication Budget Budgeted Actual
Print Publication Expense $3,891.00 $ 36.36
UCP Management Fee $1,319.00 $1,238.48
Online Operating Expense $ 168. $ 0.00
Investment in Digital Preservation $ 19.00 $ 0.00
Total Expenditures $ 5,397.00 $1,274.84
There are two sets of explanations for the growth in net assets reported for 2004. The first is that, due to the unexpected change of venue and date for the 2004 meetings, the AFA Executive Board was not formally convened but rather has been meeting electronically. Consequently, the AFA did not expend the travel funds allocated to the Chair and the AFA Program Chair, nor the funds allocated to the related costs of meeting (meals, etc.).

Furthermore, while the AFA did provide travel awards, many of our 2004 recipients elected not to attend the AAA meetings. Thus, they did not expend the grants. The AFA Travel Committee, in concert with the AFA Program Committee, will confer the grants awarded the 2004 recipients, should they elect to present their papers at the 2005 meetings. Should this occur, the AFA would double its expenditure on the travel grants as we will put out a call for applications again in 2005.

The difference between the budgeted and actual costs of publication is attributable to the decision of the AFA to publish the newsletter format of our occasional publication, Voices. This version of the newsletter will be slightly expanded and will be published in Spring, 2005. We had initially planned to publish Voices in monograph format, but changed those plans when the School of American Research accepted our proposal to develop a seminar on Gender and Globalization (4/7/05), and to publish an edited volume from the SAR Seminar papers.

AAA Meeting Activities

The AFA Program Committee was chaired by Dorothy Hodgson and Rosemary Joyce. The Committee received proposals for 16 panels, 28 volunteered papers and 4 volunteered posters. The AFA agreed to sponsor three invited sessions. For the volunteered papers, the Committee forwarded 1 to the Archaeology Section, rejected 1, and arranged the others into 5 panels. We also clustered the 4 posters into 1 session. Of the sessions accepted by the AFA, the AAA Program Committee rejected 9.

When the change in plans for the 2004 meetings was announced, the Program Co-Chairs contacted session organizers and chairs to determine their preferences. 10 panels cancelled their plans to present, 1 panel did present at the AAA meetings in Atlanta, and 4 panels elected to resubmit their (previously accepted) session proposals for the 2005 AAA meetings. Several individuals presented papers at the conference convened at the Canterbury Hotel, San Francisco. 2 panels did not respond to the queries of the AFA Program Chairs.

The AFA Program Chairs reached the decision, affirmed by the AFA Executive Board, that previously accepted sessions (2004) would be allocated space in the 2005 scientific program. However, there is concern about compression in the 2005 scientific program, given that many sections of the AAA have reached the same decision.

The AFA Executive Board likewise reached the decision not to convene at the annual meetings of the AAA, once the site for the meetings was changed to Atlanta. Instead, the AFA Board decided to meet electronically: a less than ideal solution to a problematic situation. Cheryl Mwaria, AFA Secretary, polled the AFA membership about their preferences for the 2004 Business Meeting. Based on results from that poll, the AFA chose not to convene a formal Business Meeting for 2004 but to defer that activity until the 2005 meetings of the AAA. In place of a formal Business Meeting, the AFA has relied on its website and listserve to convey information to the membership.

The Sylvia Forman Paper Competition
The Forman Committee was chaired by Florence Babb and made the following awards in 2004. The Graduate Prize was awarded to Ayse Parla (New York University) for her essay, "They even let their women work": Negotiations of labor, honor and the communist legacy among Turkish immigrant women from Bulgaria." The Undergraduate Prize was awarded to Jenni Conrad (Wesleyan University) for her essay, "Women with balls: Shaping bodies and testing identity boundaries in Italian women's rugby."

Given the problems with the 2004 meetings, the recipients of the 2004 awards received their cash prizes and their certificates informally. They will be offered the opportunity to participate in the formal ceremonies at the 2005 Business Meeting of the AFA.

Spring Meeting Activities

As in previous years, the AFA has elected to contribute funds ($300) to the Spring meetings of a Section. This year, the AFA has contributed to the Spring meeting (May, 2005) of the Society for the Anthropology of North America, which many AFA members plan to attend and to present papers.

Additionally, Nandini Gunewardena (current AFA Board member) and Ann Kingsolver (former AFA Board member) submitted a proposal to the School for American Research (SAR) for a Spring Seminar on Gender and Globalization.

The April, 2005 meeting will be organized by the SAR and co-sponsored by the AFA. The AFA's contributions are the following: organization of the schedule and content of the seminar, preparation of materials in advance of the seminar (a framing statement, collating of individual paper abstracts, correspondence with participants, etc.), a limited number of travel grants to participants without institutional funding, the drafting and editing of chapter manuscripts for the edited volume. The contributions of the SAR are to help organize the seminar, and provide meeting space and other resources for the seminar. The SAR Press has given ALL participants travel subsidies and made arrangements for participants to reserve rooms at a local hotel at a discounted rate. The Executive Editor of the SAR Press will attend the Seminar, oversee the peer review process of the individual book chapters and the volume as a whole, and shepherd the revised manuscript through production.

Website Development

Suzanne Baker is the AFA Website Coordinator. The AFA Website included several new pages over the past year, to update AFA members on labor issues related to the hotel industry, with attention both to the lockout of unionized employees by the San Francisco Hilton and the concerns articulated by members of Unite Here! The AFA has also developed a web page on Women and Globalization, with information on AFA panels in the past, syllabi, and an update on the Gender and Globalization Seminar organized by SAR and co-sponsored by the AFA.

The AFA Listserve has been very active in the past year as a means of: soliciting opinions and commentary from the membership concerning the 2004 meetings, distributing information about jobs; presenting queries from members; and conveying information about conferences, travel grants, and other resources of interest to the membership.

In short, the past year has illustrated the importance of both the Website and the Listserve as resources for the AFA membership.

2. Future Plans

The AFA has a new Executive Board, which wiill soon convene electronically to determine our thematic focus for the next two years. That decision will engender the following: an invited session that addresses the newly selected theme, the development of new web materials, and the collating of syllabi addressing the theme.

Additionally, the AFA Executive Board will have the task of recruiting a new Editor of Voices, unless the present Editor (Susan Hyatt) elects to continue in that capacity. The Board will also develop plans (schedule and content) for the monograph version of Voices.

The AFA maintains strong, if informal, ties with other Sections of the AAA. In addition to contributing to the Spring meetings of SANA, we are and will continue to be in conversation with the leadership and members of the other Sections on issues of mutual importance.

3. Other Items

Recommendation to the Executive Board

The AFA concurs with the sentiments expressed on the Section Assembly Listserve, and discussed in Atlanta in 2004, on the need for a more interactive relationship between the AAA Executive Board (EB) and the Section Assembly (SA). The SA should be more integrally involved in decision-making, and not simply serve the EB in an ancillary capacity. Moreover, the decision-making of the EB and the AAA Central Office should be as open and transparent as possible.

One of the sources of frustration about the change in plans for the 2004 meetings was that, while the advice of the SA was sought, the SA was not given complete information about the range of options under consideration by the EB. That led many Section leaders (and members of their Boards) to conclude that the SA and the broader membership were NOT being heard. This may be a mis-representation of a confusing process in a difficult time.

Nonetheless, the deliberations over the 2004 meetings has led the AFA- in conjunction with other members of the SA- to call for a change in the bylaws governing the relationship between the EB and the SA, and with particular reference to the limited authority of the latter. Such change is necessary to enhance opportunities for participatory democracy, in place of the limitations of the current arrangement.