Society for Urban, National and Transnational/Global Anthropology Annual Report Robert Rotenberg, President 12/13/2004

Officers, 2004

President: Robert Rotenberg, rrotennbe@depaul.edu

President-Elect: Susan Greenbaum, greenbau@chuma1.cas.usf.edu

Treasurer: Farha Ghannam, fghanna1@swarthmore.edu

Secretary: Elzbieta Godziak, emg27@georgetown.edu

Editor, City and Society: Emily Schultz, eschgultz@stcloudstate.edu

Third Year Counselor: Petra Kuppinger, petra@monm.edu

Second Year Counselor: Donald Nonini, dnonini@email.unc.edu

First Year Counselor: Hilarie Kelly, hkelly@fullerton.edu

Student Counselor: Peter Lawson, pjlawson@hotmail.com

Urbanth-L Managing Coordinator: Rae Bridgeman (to 9/04); Angela Jancius (from 9/04), acjancius@ysu.edu

Urbanth-L Associate Coordinator: Benito Vergara (from 9/04),

Webmaster: Lem Percell, purcellm@ufl.edu

Accomplishments for 2004

Membership:

Over the course of the year, the membership increased by an additional 5% to 745 members.

Financial Balances:

Revenues increased proportionally, while our budget remained almost the same as the previous year. Our net assets at the end of Sept. 2004 were $ 61,377.46 (this does not include any new expenses related to the AAA travel funding. See last paragraph in this section.) There was a $ 14,249.82 increase. This yielded some growth in our reserve fund. This had been anticipated as a buffer against the costs of City and Society entering AnthroSource.

Our projected budget for 2005 is $ 21,709.00 compared to $ 17,246.00 in 2004. The reason for this change is the expenses related to AnthroSource. We are not sure at this moment how much more money we may need in relation to AnthroSource. To accommodate the financial changes linked to this shift, our board decided to increase SUNTA's dues. In the first year (2005) we are asking for a raise from $28 to $32, with the possibility of $.50 increases each year in 2006, 2007, and 2008. In 2008, the dues will be $33.50. The initial increase will generate just under $3000, the projected cost of a year's document preparation by UCP. As reported by our president to the AAA, if there are any shortfalls in our budget because costs do not meet expenditures as a result of this slower growth, we will pay for them from our fund balance. Similarly, if AAA is able to distribute surpluses from AnthroSource to the sections, we may choose to cancel a scheduled increase. We will revisit this schedule each year to see if any adjustments or continued raises are necessary. In addition to the budget suggested by the AAA and UCP for City and Society, the editor of the journal needs $350 to upgrade Photoshop and InDesign, the software we use to compose the journal. She also need $250 to upgrade the fonts to OpenTitle. We also added $100 for return of visual material via FedEx, and to send journal to UC Press via FedEx.

With so many members withdrawing from participation the question of reimbursement for Society funds emerged toward the beginning of November. The Board did a quick survey and discovered twenty graduate, adjunct and foreign members in who were seeking reimbursement for travel funds. The Board voted to support a transfer of money to AAA's fund in proportion to our member's claims.

Annual Meeting Preparation and Activities:

The winter was occupied with developing our program for the 2004 meetings. WE have a very large number of submissions and the program committee worked diligently to complete their task on time. We reviewed or assembled a total of 48 panels and 2 poster sessions. The rejection rate for sessions was 43.8% (27 accepted; 21 rejected). According to the memo we received from Tanya Luhrmann, the rate was supposed to have been 33%; a difference of roughly 5 sessions. The acceptance rate includes our 3 invited sessions. The scheduling was also extremely disadvantageous. Only 5 of our sessions are on Friday or Saturday; 8 are on Wednesday, and 11 are on Sunday. Fully a third of our sessions occur on days when few people are at the conference. We protested this scheduling pattern and received apologies from both the AAA executive and the Program Chair. We have assurances from the Program Chair that their treatment of our submissions for 2005 will take these discrepancies into account. All this was rendered moot by the decline in attendance following the change in meeting location.

The scientific program that we proposed reflected the intellectual diversity of the Society's members. Alan Smart organized an interlocutor session with the urban social theorist Michael Smith. Sponsored sessions included panels on urban change, constructions of national identity, migrant experiences and transnational support networks, and an effort to re-imagine the city in a global context. We sponsored a poster session whose variety was also indicative of the Society's strength as an umbrella section for all those interested in cultural processes in complex social organizations.

In September, it was clear that both the Leeds Prize and the Student Paper Prize had attracted a lot of interest this year. At the time of this writing, the of neither prize has been announced.

Then came late October and the labor issues with the hotels in San Francisco. The Board of Directors had several decisions to make. The first was how we wanted to be represented at the Atlanta Meetings. It was clear from survey of the membership at attendance at the meetings would be low, less than 20% of the number of members who would have attended San Francisco. Several session organizers reported greater difficulties in keeping their panels together. For this reason, it was decided that SUNTA would encourage as many panels as possible to attend the Atlanta meetings. The Board of Directors would continue to hold its meeting in Atlanta.

For those anthropologists who did meet in San Francisco, several statements and resolutions have emerged that have kept the Board of Directors busy since the end of November. Using a new email procedure that will be put before the membership in April as an amendment to the Bylaws, the Board voted to support the Canterbury Statement on AAA support of labor rights and human rights in its negotiation with conference hotels.

City and Society

Two issues of City and Society were published, the last before C&ampS enters AnthroSource.

The spring revolved around the journal's entry into AnthroSource. First there were the negotiations around the Memorandum of Understanding with University of California Press. Since City and Society is produced differently from other AAA journals, the standard MOA had to be modified. Eventually, UCP accepted all of our changes. The Editor of C&S and the President of the Society signed the MOA in November. Then, the Society heard from the accountants. We were encouraged to increase our dues by an extraordinary amount to pay for the costs of producing the journal. We looked at the AAA figures and decided that we could increase our dues slowly over smaller increments, covering any additional costs from our reserve fund. The dues increase was approved by the Board of Directors in June and sent to the AAA staff.

Changes in Bylaws and Governance Structure:

The nominations committee selected one candidate for president-elect, one for treasurer, and two for counselor. In the balloting, David Haines won the support of the membership for president-elect. He will serve for four years. Anne Lewinson won a three year term for treasurer. Emanuela Guano won a three year term as counselor. The bylaw change the Board approved to include an assistant editor for City and Society was inadvertently left off the ballot by AAA staff. It will be resubmitted this year.

In June, Rae Bridgman, the founding coordinator of our email distribution list, Urbanth-L, signaled her desire to retire from that post. Two candidates presented themselves and the board decided to appoint Angela Jancius to be the second Managing Coordinator of Urbanth-L. This position answers to the Secretary and come with full voting rights on the Board of Directors. The Board appointed Benito Vergara to be her Assistant Coordinator.

The Society is grateful to have enjoyed the talents of Farha Ghannam as treasurer these last three years. Farha helped to ease our entry into AnthroSource and manage our growing reserve fund. We also are thankful for Petra Kuppinger who is finishing three years as a counselor. Petra's counsel in Board meetings has been valuable. She will now move to City and Society as Emily Schultz's new assistant editor.

I am also rotating off the Board this year. These last three years have been some of the most rewarding in my twenty year membership in SUNTA. I encourage all my fellow members to look forward to taking up the challenge of leadership, either as a counselor or as an executive office in this great Society. My best wishes to Susan Greenbaum, our next president, for continued success in steering this intellectually vibrant and politically energized community of anthropologists.

Future Plans

Through an agreement with the Society for Applied Anthropology, the business meeting of the Society would be held in Santa Fe in early April. Several panels and the interlocutor session also moved to Santa Fe.