Category: events

Student award in practicing anthropology

2011 NAPA Student Achievement Award

NAPA is now accepting submissions for the Eighth Annual Student Achievement Award, to recognize student contributions in the area of practicing and applied anthropology. The award honors students who have excelled in these fields and provides opportunities, particularly for students who have worked on team projects and in applied contexts, to be recognized during the AAA annual meeting and possibly see their work published.

Awards include three cash prizes: $300 first place; $100 first runner-up; and $50 second runner-up. Additionally, students will be awarded a certificate of recognition and will be acknowledged at the NAPA Business Meeting during the 2011 AAA meeting in Montreal, Quebec.

Papers must be no more than 25 pages in text and footnotes, excluding bibliography and any supporting materials. Papers should conform to the author guidelines of American Anthropologist. Papers must be a product of work relevant to practicing and applied anthropology including, but not limited to: examinations of community impact, contributions to identifying and improving local/service needs, or communicating anthropological theory and methods to non-anthropologists in collaborative research settings including non-profit agencies, communities, business and industrial organizations.

The deadline for submission is July 1, 2011. For more information on eligibility, judging criteria, or to submit a paper, contact NAPA Student Representative Melissa Stevens at napastudentaward@gmail.com.

Chagos conference report

Guest post by Sean Carey

The Chagos Regagne conference at the Royal Geographical Society in London on May 19 focused on the possibility of establishing an eco-village and research station on one of the outer islands of the Chagos Archipelago, part of the disputed British Indian Ocean Territory. It turned out to be extremely interesting.

Chagos International Support
Source: Chagos International Support. This is an historic image. The MPA was officially recognized in April 2010.

The event was the brainchild of bestselling novelist, Philippa Gregory, and conservationist and adventurer, Ben Fogle.

 

But this wasn’t just a “scientific” conference for marine and other scientists. Instead, there were conservationists, lawyers, development geographers, cultural anthropologists and a good number of former U.K. Foreign Office personnel, including David Snoxell, the former British high commissioner to Mauritius, as well as John MacManus, the newly appointed administrator of the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Mauritius High Commissioner Abhimanyu Kundasamy attended. Mauritius is host to the largest group of Chagossian exiles and their descendants, around 3,000 people, who live in the capital, Port Louis, and surrounding areas. Mauritius wants the return of the archipelago. In 1965, under international law, the archipelago was illegally excised from its territory by the U.K. in order to provide the U.S. with a military base on Diego Garcia.

Also in attendance were around 150 Chagossians. They had travelled from Crawley and Manchester where they have settled since leaving Mauritius and the Seychelles and becoming British passport holders in 2002.

I met David Vine, of American University in Washington, D.C., who gave an excellent and impassioned summary of his book, Island of Shame, as well as sharing his more recent thoughts on why the U.S. prefers isolated, unpopulated islands for its military bases. Put simply, it’s all a question of “no people, no problems.”

Continue reading “Chagos conference report” →

Finnish anthropology conference 2011

Dynamic Anthropology: Tensions between Theory and Practice

Where: University of Helsinki
When: October 5-7, 2011

One of the many legacies of the intellectual revolution of the 60s and 70s was the acknowledgment that anthropological theorization up until that time had principally addressed the concerns of people in Western societies: industrialized, capitalist, bureaucratic. For theory to have ‘value’ depended on how it could be harnessed to promote key societal projects. The projects have changed but it is a legacy that still generates numerous tensions: the proliferation of frequently short-lived anthropological theory after the 60s (Ortner’s ‘shreds and patches’); the postmodern critique of metanarratives and a retreat into ethnography and phenomenology; the pendulum swung back to a demand for stronger anthropological theory in the 21st century, in concert with the notion of ‘concept metaphors’; the bilateral career paths of applied anthropology – in the service of state and military organizations, corporations and NGOs – or scholarly anthropology with its emphasis on the importance of indigenous perspectives and the cultural specificity of Western projects. These – mostly productive – tensions are what make anthropology what it is today.

This conference invites participants to look beyond conventional divides and to explore and engage with theoretical, methodological, political and ethical questions from every perspective.

Please see the conference web page for details of accepted session proposals to date – and watch for updates. We cordially invite you to submit individual paper proposals which align themselves with these sessions. The proposals should comprise abstracts of 250-300 words accompanied by a brief CV and be submitted directly to the session organizers.

Deadline for paper proposals: 16th June.

Further inquiries may be made of Toomas Gross (tgross@mappi.helsinki.fi) or Timo Kallinen (timo.kallinen@helsinki.fi)

Conference on medical pluralism: techniques, politics, institutions

Call for Papers
1st EASA Medical Anthropology Network Conference on Medical Pluralism: Techniques, Politics, Institutions

Where: Rome, Italy
When: September 7 – 10, 2011

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS EXTENDED TO MAY 20TH, 2011
The conference includes panels on:

* Regional flows
* Epidemics and public health
* Clinical trials
* Materiality and social forms
* Migration and transnational pluralism
* Medical pluralism of sciences
* Disability
* Medical pluralism, reproduction and childhood

For full details of panels, conference theme, submission of abstracts, visit the website

Welling Professorship Lecture by Lawrence Bobo

The Welling Professorship Lecture by Lawrence D. Bobo, Ph.D.
“Post Racialism: The Racial Divide in the Age of Obama”

Lawrence D. Bobo is the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He holds appointments in the Department of Sociology and the Department of African and African American Studies. His research focuses on the intersection of social inequality, politics, and race. He is a founding editor of the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race and co-author of the award winning book Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations. His most recent book, Prejudice in Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute, was a finalist for the 2007 C. Wright Mills Award. Professor Bobo is an elected member of the National Academy of Science as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, an Alphonse M. Fletcher Sr. Fellow, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar.

When: Thursday, April 28th, 7:00 pm
Where: The George Washington University
Jack Morton Auditorium
805 21st Street, NW

This event is organized by the Department of Sociology in GWU’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. The event is free and open to the public.

Talk at GW by Rick Shweder

Robust Cultural Pluralism in the New World Order: Three Prophecies
2011 distinguished lecture, sponsored by the Institute for Ethnographic Research

Richard A. Shweder, William Claude Reavis distinguished service professor of human development at the University of Chicago, will analyze visions of the coming world order, such as the “end of history” thesis that predicts the triumph of U.S.-style liberal democracy.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011, 4 p.m.
Harry Harding Auditorium, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
1957 E Street, NW, room 213,cWashington, DC

No RSVP required. Free and open to the public.

For more information, e-mail anth@gwu.edu or call 202-994-6075.

Anthropologist Gillian Tett speaks at GMU on the financial crisis

George Mason University’s Center for Emerging Market Policies (CEMP) invites you to:
Silos in Finance: The Silences that Contributed to the Financial Crisis
When: Friday, April 15, 5:00 – 6:30 PM

Reception immediately following talk. RSVP at: cemp@gmu.edu

Speaker:
Gillian Tett, U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times, social anthropologist and author of the best-selling Fool’s Gold. Tett was named Journalist of the Year (2009) and Business Journalist of the Year (2008) by the British Press Awards and Senior Financial Journalist of the Year (2007) by the Wincott Awards. She is the author of New York Times bestseller Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe and Saving the Sun: A Wall Street Gamble to Rescue Japan from its Trillion Dollar Meltdown (Harper Collins, 2003). Before joining the Financial Times in 1993, Tett was awarded a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Cambridge University based on field work in the former Soviet Union. While pursuing the Ph.D., she freelanced for the FT and the BBC.

British museum event: media and nation building

Seminar Series at the British Museum’s Centre for Anthropology

When: Thursday 21st April 2011 at 10.00 am (tea & coffee served from 9.30am)
Where: Centre for Anthropology, British Museum

The British Museum’s Centre for Anthropology, in collaboration with the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), is delighted to present for the 4th seminar of the series a discussion between Dr John Postill author of ‘Media and Nation-building: How the Iban Became Malaysian’ and Dr Felicia Hughes-Freeland who reviewed the work for the JRAI.

This event is free. Click here for more details.

2011 summer Zulu program

June 13 – August 5

The University of Pennsylvania’s African Studies Center will host the 2011 Summer Zulu Program to teach intensive Zulu language and culture. The program will run for 8 weeks, from June 13 through August 5, 2011. They will offer elementary and intermediate levels; they will consider the advanced level also provided they get sufficient enrollments. No prerequisite for beginners (elementary level), and students/professionals from any academic backgrounds can apply.

If you have any questions about the Summer Zulu Program please feel free to contact Audrey N Mbeje at mbeje@sas.upenn.edu or via zulu-language@sas.upenn.edu.