Thomas E. Sheridan, Ph.D.
President

Executive Board, 2004
Thomas E. Sheridan, President, 2003-05 (tes@email.arizona.edu)
Kelly Alley, President-Elect, 2005-07 (alleyk@groupwise1.duc.auburn.edu)
Bonnie McKay, Past President (mccay@AESOP.RUTGERS.EDU)
Molly Doane, Treasurer, 2002-04 (molly.doane@marquette.edu)
Stephen Brush, At-Large, 2003-05 (sbbrush@ucdavis.edu)
Pamela Puntenney, At-Large(2002-04) (pjpunt@mich.edu)
Michael Paolisso, At-Large (2002-04) (mpaolisso@anth.umd.edu)
Wendy Weisman, Student Representative (2003-05) (wendy_weisman@hotmail.com)
Rebecca Zarger, Column Editor (2005-07 (zarger@fiu.edu)
Susan Charnley, At-Large (2005-07) (scharnley@fs.fed.us)
Catherine Tucker (2004-06) (tuckerc@indiana.edu)
Crystal Fortwangler, Column Editor (2005-07) (crystalf@umich.edu)
J.R. Stepp, Treasurer, 2005-07 (stepp@anthro.ufl.edu)
Eric Jones, Program Chair, 2005-07 (etjones@ifcae.org)

Accomplishments

1) Membership 2)

Membership grew from 491 in December 2003 to 516 in November 2004, the latest month for which we have data. Membership fluctuated from a high of 542 in September to a low of 482 in January. This makes A&E the 17th largest section in the AAA (37 sections).

3) Finances 4)

A&E fund balance on 1/1/04 $11,918.97
A&E fund balance on 11/30/04 $15,128.15

As of 11/30/04, the following categories in 2004 Budget had unexpended funds:

Travel & Related Expenses ($2,000) $1,500.00
Pending: President ($1,000) -$600.00

Won't Be Expended: +900.00
President: ($400 of 1,000)
Treasurer ($250)
Program Chair ($250)

Awards & Honors ($2,000) $1,750.00
Pending: Julian Steward Award -$500.00
Jr. Scholar Award -500.00
Rappaport Finalists -500.00
Postponed to 05: Lourdes Arispe Award -500.00
Subtotal Pending -2,000.00

Note: Changes in Rappaport Award at 2003 Annual Executive Board Meeting
After 2004 Budget submitted increased award from $500 to $750.

Development & Promotion ($4,000) $4,000.00
Pending:
Public Policy Center Initiative ($1,000) -1,000
Lourdes Arispe Reception ($1,000) -1,000
Subtotal Pending -2,000

Won't Be Expended:
Public Policy Forum ($2,000) +2,000

The following category was not in 2004 Budget:

Meeting Food/Space (Canterbury Convocation) $750.00

Once all commitments in 2004 Budget have been paid, unexpended budgeted items ($2,900) will exceed expenses not budgeted ($1,000) by $1,900.00

Most of those discrepancies were due to the change in time and location of the AAA Annual Meeting, which wreaked havoc with both the A&E budget and its planned events at the San Francisco meeting. A&E cancelled a Public Policy Forum budgeted under Development & Outreach for $2,000. We postponed the Lourdes Arispe Award ($500) and Reception ($1,000) until the 2005 Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Neither the Program Chair ($250) nor the Treasurer ($250) went to the Canterbury Convocation or the AAA Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Because we did hold our executive board and business meetings and the Rappaport Student Panel the Canterbury Convocation, we faced unanticipated expenses for Meeting Rooms of $750.

3) A&E Meeting Activities

Dr. Christopher Tarnowski, A&E Program Chair for the Annual Meeting in San Francisco, reviewed and ranked 16 session proposals. AAA accepted 10, two of which were invited. When, because of the lockout, the AAA Executive Board decided, quite rightly, not to hold the Annual Meeting at the San Francisco Hilton, the A&E Executive Board polled our members, who voted overwhelmingly to hold the Annual Meeting at an alternative location in the Bay area, not Atlanta. When Atlanta was chosen, all 10 A&E sessions were cancelled by their organizers and papers were withdrawn.

Dr. Kelly Alley, President-Elect, and Dr. Melissa Checker, who co-organized a Public Policy Forum on the Precautionary Principle, also decided to cancel. The Lourdes Arispe Award announcement/reception was postponed until the 2005 meeting in Washington, D.C.

Despite the anger and confusion surrounding the meeting change, A&E, along with the Council on Anthropology & Education and the Society for the Anthropology of Work, organized the Canterbury Convocation in San Francisco, an alternative anthropological meeting held November 17-21. Approximately 250 people attended. Six present and incoming members of the A&E Executive Board were able to attend our board and business meetings, which attracted about 25 people. The co-winners of the A&E Junior Scholar Award ($250 apiece) were announced:

Hayden, Cori. 2003. From Market to Market: Bioprospecting's Idioms of Inclusion. American Ethnologist 30(3);359-71. (UC-Berkeley and Girton College, U of Cambridge).

Checker, Melissa. 2004. "We All Have Identity at the Table": Negotiating Difference in a Southern African American Environmental Justice Network. Global Studies in Culture and Power 11:171-94. (Dept of Anthropology, U of Memphis)

Runner Up:

Greene. Shane. 2004. Indigenous People Incorporated? Culture as Politics, Culture as Property in Pharmaceutical Bioprospecting. Current Anthropology 45(2):211-36. (Dept of Sociology & Anthropology, Florida International U)

More importantly, we were able to hold our Rappaport Prize Panel entitled Anthropology & Environment: The Next Generation. All five graduate student finalists, who received $100/apiece to attend the meeting, presented their papers. Our panel of judges awarded the $250 prize to Jill Constantino (Michigan) for her paper "The 'Wild West' of the Pacific: Peopling and Depeopling the Galapagos Islands." A&E member Derek Fay organized an A&E session at the Canterbury Convocation as well.

The other important outcome of the Canterbury Convocation was the Canterbury Statement, which President Sheridan helped draft. A&E membership were polled via the EANTH-listserv and again voted overwhelmingly to support the Canterbury Statement. The statement was submitted to the AAA Executive Board before their meeting in Atlanta.

In response, the AAA Executive Board passed a resolution restricting future AAA meetings to union hotels and created an appointed Committee on Labor Issues so the committee could begin work without having to wait for an election cycle to take place.

4) Public Policy Center Initiative

A&E has been one of the staunchest supports of an anthropological public policy center ever since Dr. Peter Brocius, a past president of A&E, presented his "Professionalizing Public Policy at AAA" to the AAA Committee on Public Policy in 2001. In June 2004, AAA President Liz Brumfiel organized a small working conference at Northwestern University, including President Sheridan. The conference produced a proposal to create a Center for Human Studies and Public Policy lodged in an academic institution in the Washington, D.C. area. The planning group then contacted seven universities in the area which expressed interest in the Center. To continue its work, the planning group requested $5,000 apiece from the Society for Applied Anthropology and the AAA. The SfAA Executive Board turned down the request, but the AAA EB voted to allocate the funds. The $1,000 budgeted by A&E to support the Public Policy Center in 2004 was used to pay travel expenses of President Sheridan and others who attended the planning conference.

5) Website Development, Listserv, etc.

A&E continued to maintain and update its website and the EANTH-listserv, which has more than 700 subscribers. The website is now maintained by Sean Downey, a graduate student in Anthropology at the U of Arizona (see below). The listserv is maintained by Adam Henne, a graduate student in Anthropology at the U of Georgia.

6) Student Mentoring, Fellowships 7)

A&E continues to provide $500/year for the AAA Minority Fellowship. Its primary student mentoring project is the Rappaport Prize and Panel. Graduate students submit abstracts in the spring. A panel of three judges selects five finalists, who submit papers by October 1. The three judges comment on the papers. The students then present their papers at the AAA Annual Meeting. A&E members then volunteer as mentors to help them turn their papers into publishable manuscripts. In other words, at least four professional anthropologists comment on each finalist's paper. Last year, we received 26 Rappaport submissions.

New A&E Activities in 2005

In 2005, A&E is intensifying its efforts at Outreach and Training by sponsoring or co-sponsoring one symposium and one workshop.

Saving the Wide Open Spaces: How to Conserve Biodiversity and Sustainable Ranching, Forestry, and Farming in the American West (May 2005)

Organized by A&E President Sheridan, this A&E co-sponsored symposium will bring approximately 35 participants together in Tucson, Arizona, on May 13-15, 2005. The goal of the symposium is to promote working landscapes in the American West that conserve biodiversity and sustainable ranching, timbering, and farming. Participants will include anthropologists, conservation biologists, ranchers, farmers, forestry workers, grassroots activists, and representatives from NGOs and federal agencies involved in the management of Western public lands. The symposium will be cosponsored by The Southwest Center of the University of Arizona, the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, New Mexico State University, the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, the Quivira Coalition, and other organizations. A&E will provide $1,500 to support this symposium.

Conservation and Community Workshop (November 2005)

A AAA/SfAA joint working group hosted by AAA President Elizabeth Brumfiel met this June at Northwestern University to hammer out a Public Policy Center Initiative. One objective of the Public Policy Center is to bring together anthropologists and policy actors to address issues of public policy. The first topic the Public Policy Center will focus on will be Anthropology and the Environment, in particular, the need for anthropologists to be involved in the design and implementation of both national and international conservation programs so that the needs and concerns of local communities affected by the programs are understood, respected, and considered at all program levels.
A&E President Sheridan, who attended the meeting, volunteered A&E to sponsor a workshop at the 2005 AAA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. that will bring anthropologists from the A&E Conservation and Community Working Group together with conservation biologists, federal policy makers, and representatives from international conservation NGOs like The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund. The details and scope of the workshop need to be worked out, but the workshop represents a continuation of A&E Conservation and Community Working Group efforts that have included a workshop at the 2001 AAA Annual Meeting, two symposiums at the University of Georgia, and the proposed May 2005 symposium in Tucson. The A&E is proposing to provide $2,000 to support this workshop.

Website Development

A&E has hired a new webmaster, Sean Downey, a graduate student in the University of Arizona Anthropology Department and the former owner of a software development company. A&E plans to expand existing components of the website, particularly Syllabi and Environmental Anthropology Programs. Webmaster Downey is also going to explore the costs/benefits of finding a new server that would allow the website to be more interactive. To that end, President-Elect Alley has created a media page that would allow A&E members to list their areas of expertise.

Raising Membership Dues and Cutting Costs

Suzanne Mattingly pointed out to President Sheridan that A&E was operating at a deficit when he submitted the 2005 Budget. President Sheridan therefore recommended to the A&E Executive Board that membership dues be raised from $15 to $20. He further suggested that costs be cut by reducing the amount of the Julian Steward and Junior Scholar awards from $500 to $250 and cutting the President's Travel Budget from $1,000 to $500. The A&E EB adopted those recommendations. A&E members will be polled in February to find out their opinion of these proposed changes.