| January 7, 2005
To: Kim Baker Members, Executive Board From: David A. Kideckel Out-going President, Society for the Anthropology of Europe Re: Annual Report, 2004 Below please find the annual report of activities undertaken by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe for the 2004 calendar year. Due to the circumstances with the annual meeting and the SAE Executive Board's inability to engage in a full discussion of issues, I am addressing this report to both AAA and the SAE Board. With submission of this report, my official term and responsibilities as SAE president are now at an end. There have been a number of small changes in the Society since my assuming office. None, however, is as significant as our participation in AnthroSource, to which I devote a bit of attention below. I am pleased to have been able to serve the SAE and look forward to the Society's robust future. Here, then, is the summary of key Society issues and processes for the last year. Membership: SAE membership numbers remain largely unchanged over the past year. As of Octber 2004 the Society had a total of 526 members, down from 530 from September 2003. This decline was both in student memberships (177 to 175) and regular memberships(353 to 351). Through the 2003-04 calendar year membership fluctuated with a high of 533 (Nov 03) to a low of 505 (Jan 04). Membership dues are still nearly the sole income generating activity of the Society. With the possible in-roads that AnthroSource might make on Society membership beginning with the 2005-2006 calendar year, the Society's Executive Board ought to specifically turn its attention to devising ways to add more value to SAE membership to retain, if not increase, our numbers in the coming years. Finances: SAE's financial circumstances are somewhat problematic.Though the Society is financially viable, our participation in AnthroSource leaves us in an unpredictable resource situation for development of major initiatives, such as a second SAE-CES Post-Dissertation Fellowship. In an odd way, the confusion over the AAA Annual Meeting, though it meant canceling our very fine program, came at a propitious time. The savings generated from cancellation of the annual program helped defray the larger initial costs of AnthroSource, exceeding those generally used to support publication of JSAE. In any case, the Society must again concern itself with developing new or intensifying existing means for accessing additional revenues, as indicated above. SAE Finances Net Assets beginning of year: $10,783.15 William A. Douglass Endowment
Net assets at beginning of year: $52, 102.47 However, these figures do not reflect costs of $5214 for AnthroSource publication expenses, an additional $500 to support editorial work of Lynn Maners, nor do they show $4,000 for SAE-CES Pre-Dissertation Fellowship Award, or the $350 for graduate student paper prize. For the Douglass fund, they do not reflect costs of $500 for William A. Douglass Book Prize. Annual Meeting Activities: SAE continues its high level of activity and visibility at the AAA Annual Meeting. The strength and breadth of our meeting program is one of the Society's strong suits and is a source of interest that appeals and potentially draws members. The San Francisco program, organized by Mark Ingram and Sascha Goluboff, gave evidence of being another strong one, with two invited sessions, a number of sponsored sessions, our planned Distinguished Lecturer, Valery Tishkov, and five well-subscribed luncheon roundtables. However, all SAE activities were formally cancelled upon formal vote of the SAE membership. A few of us did, however, attempt to informally preserve the SAE general business meeting, to debate some of the current issues re: AAA and SAE. Ten people showed up for this "business meeting" and five for the informal meeting of the East European Anthropology Group. Though Hungarianist, German, and French interest sections were also on the AAA schedule, no one showed for these meetings. Due to the lack of a formal Executive Board meeting or SAE business meeting, there were no changes in by-laws and governance passed this year. Still on the books from last year, however, is the desire of the SAE to invite the European Association of Social Anthropologists to appoint an individual to serve as an ex-officio member of the SAE board. Prizes: The Society awarded the second annual William A. Douglas Book Prize in Europeanist Anthropology to Katherine Verdery of the University of Michigan. The Society awarded the annual SAE-Council of European Studies Pre-dissertation Fellowship to Angelina Zontine of the University of Massachusetts. The Society awarded a prize for the best Graduate Student paper in anthropology to Brian Schwegler of the University of Chicago. JSAE and AnthroSource: JSAE continues to develop its readership and image. Along with SAE member subscriptions, JSAE has also begun to extend its outside readership. Editorship was a brief critical issue last year as this passed to Lynn Maners from Kelli Costa slightly earlier than expected due to Kelli's suffering an accident. Tom Taaffe continued as book review editor. One issue of the Journal (Vol. 4, nr. 1) was produced in 2004, with another due out at any moment. The delay of Vol. 4 nr. 2 was due to some small glitches in the changeover of editorships from Kelli Costa to Lynn Maners and difficulty of communicating with the authors of one of the issue articles. Conversion of JSAE to an AnthroSource linked publication, will require the Journal to be published on a strict April-October schedule. On-going issues with management of JSAE that the SAE Executive Board ought to consider include limitations on editorial terms and establishment of formal editorial board for the journal. AnthroSource: SAE officially agreed to join AnthroSource at the Chicago AAA annual meeting in 2003. The relationship was further formalized in an August conference call between Susie Skomal of AAA and David Kideckel, Lynn Maners, and Barbara West, representing SAE. Formal integration with AnthroSource will commence with content scanning and hot-linking in 2005 and be fully operational as of 2006. The relationship of SAE to AnthroSource should be a continual topic of concern for the SAE Executive Board over the next few years. The chief issues re: SAE-AnthroSource are: 1) its continuing costs and benefits and 2) its potential impact on SAE membership. The continuing costs and benefits of AnthroSource to SAE are still unpredictable. These are currently determined by a formula stressing amount of "legacy content" scanned and available. Subsequent formulae will probably also consider amount of "hits" on and actual "downloads" of various available on-line content. SAE is in a miniscule position in both, relative to other AAA sections. There is, however, a considerable degree of other content available to SAE in the form of back issues of the Newsletter of the East European Anthropology Group and its successor, the Anthropology of East Europe Review. Some past AEER special issues still have good readerships, so this content might be a benefit to SAE. However, two issues stand in the way of this. First, copyright issues would need to be resolved about this past content (implicating SAE's formal relationship with EEAG) and additional monies would need be found to have these materials scanned to AnthroSource requirements. The other chief AnthroSource issue concerns retention of members. As all AAA members and other subscribers will now be able to have ready on-line access JSAE and publications of other sections as well, there is decreased reason to join particular sections. SAE Executive Board thus needs to consider what other kind of value added materials might be developed exclusively for SAE members to retain, if not expand, membership levels. H-SAE: Report from Tony Galt indicated that H-SAE has 778 members distributed world wide. It averaged 21.66 messages a month from October 2003 through September 2004, with a peak in the January through April period and an expectable low in the summer months. During the first month of the period the list was managed by Roland Moore, who sat in for Tony Galt while he recovered from head injuries sustained in August of 2003. Galt expresses his gratitude for this aid. H-SAE no longer has its own book review editor and so reviews that appear on-line are chosen from the list of all H-Net reviews for their relevance to the anthropology of Europe. There has been some talk in the past about co-publishing reviews with the association's print publication, but this idea needs to be further discussed. Galt recommended that SAE seek someone willing to coordinate book reviews for the list, though this was not discussed at the truncated Atlanta AAA Meetings. Other Activities: Susan Mazur-Stommen, chair of Special Projects committee reports contract for SAE Series on European Anthropology in Translation to be published through Berghann books is signed and call for submissions has been announced. Issues for SAE Executive Board: As indicated, SAE Executive Board needs to consider: 1) What to do regarding past content from AEER and relationship with EEAG; 2) How SAE can expand financial base (including initiatives related to retaining and/or expanding membership; 3) Whether dues be raised from current $25 for full members (last raised in 2002). Board also needs to consider reorganization of JSAE management and also reorganization of Executive Board after Jeff Cole's suggestion of abolishing Membership Committee and committee chair. Issues for AAA Executive Board: No specific SAE recommendations were passed re: the relationship of Sections to AAA governance, pursuant to the issues that arose related to the San Francisco/Atlanta meeting. However, the SAE Executive Board unanimously voiced support for the Pauline Strong resolution re: AAA governance. Additionally Kideckel and others spoke strongly in favor of the AAA's adopting a management structure that not only gave the Section Assembly formal voice, but also gave smaller sections a voice within that voice. SAE also needs AAA Executive Board to specify AnthroSource formulae and suggestions for treatment of other potential AnthroSource content.
Section officer names, E-mail addresses, and Date of term expiration for 2005: |
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