12:15 PM-1:30 PM
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY (A&E) DISSERTATION WORKSHOP (2-0250)
Sarah A Besky and Andrew S Mathews

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2012

8:00 AM-11:45 AM
INVITED SESSION: ECOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2012 (3-0190)
Sean S Downey, Yancey A Orr, and Richard R Wilk
List of papers 

1:45 PM-5:30 PM
INVITED SESSION: KNOWLEDGE BOUNDARIES: CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES IN STUDYING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE (3-0780)
Matthew T Lauer and Mark Moritz
List of papers

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012

10:15 AM-12:00 PM
INVITED SESSION: PROGNOSIS POLITICS: VISIONS OF RESOURCE FUTURES (4-0330)
Jessica E Barnes and Mandana Limbert
List of papers

12:15 PM-1:30 PM
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY (A&E) BOARD MEETING (4-0545)

4:00 PM-5:45 PM
ANNUAL RAPPAPORT STUDENT PANEL AND AWARD (4-0900)
David M Hoffman PhD, Katja Grotzner Neves, Crystal L Fortwangler and Robert Fletcher
List of papers

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2012

1:45 PM-3:30 PM
ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY POSTER SESSION (5-0820)
List of posters

6:15 PM-7:30 PM
ANTHROPOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY BUSINESS MEETING (5-1125)
Open to AES membership and the public

The AAA Task Force on Global Climate Change is relatively new and we have just finalized our membership, so we would like to introduce ourselves and explore mutual interests with A&E on issues about the environment, agriculture, food, archaeology, or public policy.  One of the most striking things we’ve discovered so far is the growing extent to which anthropological and archaeological inquiry is focused on climate change, both historical/archaeological and in contemporary ethnography and political ecological analysis.  Anthropologists are working in communities and arenas where climate change is affecting the people with whom we work, either directly via the environment, or through institutions and programs as a result of global governance related to climate change.  As humans and cultures, we have been down some of these paths before (adjusting to swings in climate) with critical lessons, as archaeologists are showing us.

In brief, the Task Force came about because of strong AAA member interest and the support of  A&E  and the Section Assembly.  Our objectives are to recognize and communicate anthropological roles in and contributions to the study of climate change and climate-related issues, with particular emphasis on representing many voices and capturing stories, past and present;  to produce guiding documents to recognize, promote and develop anthropological contributions to global climate change-related issues; and promote engagement of the AAA and anthropologists in general with public policy agendas and the greater public interest, utilizing media and outreach modalities to reach beyond the discipline.  At the end of our term, we will provide the AAA with proposed actions and recommendations to support and promote anthropological engagement with climate change in research, guidance for students, and engaging with the public and policy circles.  You can find us at  http://www.aaanet.org/cmtes/commissions/CCTF/gcctf.cfm).

2012 AAA Meetings.  There are two things that are happening right now, in preparation for the 2012 meetings, for which we ask for your help and invite your participation and feedback.

We have one scientific session as a task force, and while we are precluded from co-sponsorship of sessions, we are committed to ensuring broad participation from all sub-disciplines and interpretations, from archaeological to contemporary ethnographic studies at multiple scales and insights, from global governance to political ecology.  To make these sessions widely available, we have been in touch with some of you, and have sent out a call for abstracts, but need your help in distributing this among your members who may be interested in the topic. We are also willing to share and build sessions collaboratively should there be overflow interest.  

In addition, we will propose a Public Policy Forum that builds on the scientific session, working through the Committee on Public Policy and IGAPP.  The policy forum will focus on the critical questions of anthropology and climate change – how best to integrate into and inform the policy process on the knowledge and insights that anthropology has, such as inequities of climate change, the need to re-think foundational concepts like adaptation and mitigation, and the enormous impact on place-based peoples, both past and present.

Changing the Atmosphere Column. We found that one of the most frequent requests is to find out what other anthropologists are doing in their engagement with climate change – studying the impact and challenges to communities, running field schools that monitor local ecological knowledge and climate change, or graduate students who want to be in touch with other people in the field.  The Task Force has started a monthly column on the Anthropology News website that helps address those needs – highlighting the work that anthropologists are doing and their insights into the phenomena of climate change.  We are actively soliciting people who would like to be featured in this concise and pithy column.  Sarah Strauss (strauss@uwyo.edu) is our Contributing Editor, and here is a link to our first column, which is in the current online version of AN: http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/02/14/tales-from-the-aaa-task-force-on-global-climate-change/.   Please feel free to circulate to any of your members who have an interest in climate change from any angle if they would like to participate. You can also write comments at the bottom of any article and give us feedback on the web.  Let us hear from you.

Statements on Anthropology and Climate Change.   Task Force members and anthropologists at climate change sessions generally agree that we do not do a good job of translating our messages to the outside world.  Anthropologists have front-row seats in observing the impacts of climate change and in observing governance and scientific institutions at work.  We have knowledge about elements and impacts of climate change that need to be communicated to our own membership, other disciplines, and especially to decision makers and the general public more effectively.  The task force will be drafting a series of monthly statements on foundational elements of anthropology and climate change, from the unanticipated and deleterious impacts of climate change, to “adaptation” and the IPCC process.  These can be re-drafted as letters to the editor or other short pieces where appropriate.   I think you can see that we potentially have some areas of mutual concern, such as policy and human rights.  We would like to solicit participation from your members (and former members) who are interested in climate change to participate in the drafting and review of such statements prior to putting them on our website for greater comment.  Keep an eye out for a listing of the potential statements in our electronic Anthropology News column or contact me, Shirley Fiske, at sfiske@umd.edu.

Our longer-term objectives include building deeper and thicker relationships across interdisciplinary organizations, in an effort to extend the reach of anthropology analysis and insight.  To that end we have members in and are meeting with AGU, AMS, and AAAS, ESA and others.  We plan to build an accessible interactive “locale” for educational resources for graduate students, including bibliographies and syllabi, to encourage graduate students to focus in the developing field of climate change anthropology.

Please keep an eye out for us, and weigh in on the online version of AN.  A new posting is due to go up shortly.  You can also contact any of us or Shirley Fiske directly at  sjfiske@umd.edu or our AAA staff liaison, Amy Goldenberg at agoldenberg@aaanet.org.

AAA Global Climate Change Task Force Members (alphabetically):

• Susan Crate, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University
• Carole L Crumley, Professor, Stockholm Resilience Centre,  Stockholm University
• Shirley Fiske (Chair), Research Professor, Anthropology, University of Maryland;
• Kathleen Galvin, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Co-Director, Institute for Society, Landscape and Ecosystem Change, Senior Research Scientist, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory,Colorado State University
• Heather Lazrus, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
• George Luber, Associate Director for Climate Change, Climate Change Program, Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
• Lisa Lucero, Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Anthony Oliver Smith, Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida
• Ben Orlove, Professor, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
• Sarah Strauss, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming
• Richard R Wilk, Provost Professor , Department of Anthropology, Indiana University

Nature and Ethics Across Geographical, Discursive and Human Borders

(co-sponsored with American Ethnological Society)

Session Abstract: The nature-culture dichotomy is perhaps the most critical legacy of anthropological debate, but nature remains salient wherever ethnographic research takes place. Nature is a ‘tidemark’ concept that is, like the sea, continually refreshed and reconstituted, yet its residue clings. Despite predictions of its deconstruction and consequent demise, nature re-emerges as surely as the tides (Strathern 1992; Franklin 2003). This panel will consider how this concept becomes reconstituted and how our relationship to it looks in the twenty-first century. It will focus on the ways in which nature becomes invested with moral authority and examine the connections and disjunctures between nature and ethics across cultural, species, geographic and ethical boundaries. The papers respond to the observation that, while nature remains an ambiguous and risky force, we appear to be in a time in which it is increasingly linked to ethical living and virtues. The ethicising of nature is evident in environmentalist rhetoric, but, as this panel will show, it reaches much further. The papers reflect this, presenting ethnography from the USA, Japan, South Africa, UK, Australia, France, Peru, Brazil, India, China and Portugal. The relationship between nature and ethics bears directly on the way people think about themselves and their connections with others. The papers by Bia, Gugganig and Jensen focus particularly on how nature and ethics figure together in kinship and identity, often in direct contrast to dominant local ethical and political discourses. The way we relate to non-human entities can provide compelling insights into our ideas about nature and our ethical obligations towards it (Haraway 1991) and a number of the papers, including those by Dennis, Candea and Ogden, consider ‘transhuman’ relationships. Many of the papers critically examine how ethics plays a part in the way in which people make competing claims on and for nature, including those by Lynteris, Goldstein, Faircloth and Lamoreaux, which compare contested conceptions of nature within the same or neighbouring locations. All of the papers consider the political, economic and social effects of nature as it becomes invested with moral authority. Contemporary efforts to ‘assist’ nature, whether through caring for the environment or the development of biotechnologies, has led to a blossoming of the field of bioethics as well as anthropological analyses of nature, ethics and technology. Reed, Sousa and Clarke respond directly to these developments, considering how working directly with the natural world relies upon and reproduces specific conceptions of the natural and the ethical. In this panel, the contributors will be ably led by the discussants, Sarah Franklin and Michal Nahman, who are leading figures in the field of nature and bioethics. It is planned that this panel will lead to an edited volume, continuing this conversation about the relationship between two pivotal concepts in human culture. References: Franklin, S. 2003. Re-thinking nature-culture: Anthropology and the new genetics. Anthropological Theory 3(1): 65-85 Haraway, D. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge Strathern, M. 1992. After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Organizers:  Katharine Dow (UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH) and Victoria Jane Boydell (Independent Scholar)

Chairs:  Michal Nahman (University of the West of England)

Discussants:  Sarah Franklin (London School of Economics)

Presenters: Mascha Gugganig (University of British Columbia), Liliana Gil Russo de Sousa (University of Coimbra), Ruth Goldstein (University of California, Berkeley), Eva Jansen (University of Munich), Charlotte R Faircloth (University of Kent), Janelle D Lamoreaux (University of California, Berkeley), Christos Lynteris (University of St Andrews ), Jesse Bia (University of Oxford), Matei Candea (Durham University), Simone Jane Dennis (Australian National University), Jennifer Clarke (Aberdeen University); Adam D Reed (University of St Andrews); Laura A Ogden (Florida International University)

The Continuing Traces, Tidemarks, and Legacies of Walter Goldschmidt’s Life and Work, Part II

co-sponsored with Culture and Agriculture

Session Abstract: From his early work on industrial agriculture through his work on native land rights in Alaska and his studies of the economics of herding in Africa, Walter Goldschmidt’s contributions to anthropology focused on different ways of understanding land, boundaries and spatial relations. His later work on human evolution was concerned with the boundary between the human and the infrahuman. In 2001, nine years before his death on September 1, 2010 at the age of 97, Walter Goldschmidt concluded his review of the numerous shifts and flows of anthropological thought over the seventy years he’d been doing anthropology with a plea that anthropologists, as “keepers of context and interrelatedness,” forego sectarian quarreling and “take on our responsibilities as keepers of a holistic faith” (2001, American Anthropologist 102(4):789-807:803). Five years later he published Bridge to Humanity: How Affect Hunger Trumps the Selfish Gene (2006, Oxford University Press). In this career capstone, he adduced complex evidence from primatology, as well as linguistic, psychological, biological, archaeological and cultural anthropologies to show that as the components of anthropology shift and re-identify themselves, they work best as interlocking approaches to understand the human condition. Anthropological approaches and theories ebb and flow but what endures is sound ethnography and the service we do for others. Goldschmidt left a mighty legacy of both. The current interest in public anthropology can be traced to the then new medium of radio where Goldschmidt’s programs helped popularize the field. Another trace is his interest in policy where he worked tirelessly to promote the land rights of Alaskan natives as well as to reform agricultural policy to create more equitable conditions for small farmers as the onslaught of industrial agriculture took hold. Another trace is our discipline’s abiding interest in cross-cultural psychology. He was a founding member of the Society for Psychological Anthropology and served as editor of its journal, Ethos when the editors met at his house to lay out the copy. Finally, he served as the 1976 president of the AAA. Papers will be presented by people who studied and worked with Walter Goldschmidt and will cover the range of four-field anthropology, as Goldschmidt did, from biological anthropology to public policy to public anthropology, to psychological anthropology and anthropological understanding of the U.S.

Organizers:  E Paul Durrenberger (Penn State) and Kendall M Thu (Northern Illinois University)

Chairs:  E Paul Durrenberger (Penn State) and Kendall M Thu (Northern Illinois University)

Presenters: Karl Eggert (University of Colorado), Steve J. Langdon (University of Alaska, Fairbanks), Mark Moritz (The Ohio State University), Daniel O’connell (Cornell University), Robert A Rubinstein (Syracuse University), Thomas F Thornton (Oxford University), Jon G Wagner (Knox College)

Gitxaała Laxyuup (Kitkatla Nation):  Tracing Gitxaala History and Culture Through Archaeology and Anthropology

(co-sponsored with Society for the Anthropology of North America)

Session Abstract: Gitxaała is an ancient indigenous nation on the north coast of contemporary British Columbia. Like many other indigenous communities in B.C. Gitxaała is engaged in an ongoing struggle to assert their aboriginal rights and title to their laxyuup (loosely translated: territory). In this current struggle the resources of the past –historical documents, ethnographic accounts, and the material remains preserved as the ‘archaeological record-’ become resources in the struggle over contemporary ownership between the government and First Nations and between First Nations themselves. This panel seeks to explore our understanding of the ancient past AND the ways in which that past takes shape in the crucible of contemporary legal and political struggles. We have framed this panel to address this primary research question: to what extent can archaeological and anthropological scholarship validate or discount contemporary claims about the past? This will be accomplished through the combination of archaeological and anthropological methods with Gitxaała approaches to knowledge. Archaeologically, this panel seeks to clarify our understanding of: 1) regional patterns of use and occupancy throughout the southern reaches of Gitxaała laxyuup; 2) village size and population profiles, and; 3) the ancient diet and related resource utilization profile of Gitxaała and their ancestors. Our socio-cultural anthropological stream seeks to clarify our understanding of 1) the extent to which archaeological and anthropological scholarship can validate or discount claims to history, and; 2) how to navigate between contradictory historical claims from Aboriginal groups in a context in which the archaeological record becomes a resource in contemporary political contexts.

Organizers:  Charles R Menzies (UBC) and Caroline F Butler (Gitxaala Environmental Monitoring)

Chair:  Charles R Menzies (UBC)

Discussant:  Caroline F Butler (Gitxaala Environmental Monitoring)

Presenters: Charles R Menzies (UBC), Iain McKechnie (University of British Columbia), Naomi Smethurst (University of British Columbia), Kenzie Jessome (University of British Columbia), Morgan Moffitt (University of British Columbia), Jonathan Irons (University of British Columbia)