United States

For the second half of the twentieth century and nearly twenty years into this millennium, June Nash was an intellectual giant and powerful witness to the possibilities that anthropology had in linking truth-telling with responsibility in multiple disciplines. Whether it was an innovative approach to the study of gender in Latin America, addressing the intersection of class with other multiple identities, or showing how social activism could both underwrite and be driven by ethnography, Nash influenced the lives of thousands. She showed how understanding global processes played out in local contexts while at the same time showing that the responsibilities that anthropologists bore (and should bear) extended far beyond their disciplinary quests, always folding back into and permeating the lives of individuals impacted by globalization. This panel brings together leading scholars who will explore the multiple truths and responsibilities that were brought into being throughout Nash’s illustrious and unmatched career. Through their papers, a discussion of the social responsibilities and quest for justice that underwrote her approach to making anthropology a powerful instrument for advocacy and change should remind us of what continues to be at stake and to whom we are truly accountable.

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

In the Eyes of (our now) Ancestor: Thanks, June Nash, for Lifting Mayan/My Visions

globalization

social justice

politics

Truth and Responsibility
“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Many consider anthropology to be a holistic social science dedicated to cross-cultural understanding as a way to reduce bigotry and more fully comprehend “what it means to be human.” Others push against this readily circulated origin story, arguing that “human” remains a highly contested, political category—evident as the presumed set of rights and protections associated with the “human” continue to be stripped away violently in the communities in which some of us live and work. Which violent histories and epistemologies must anthropologists take responsibility for in telling truth(s) about the discipline’s development? How do the dual histories of settler colonialism and slavery continue to influence anthropological thought and practices? In these political times, how can anthropologists throughout the globe work to secure a capacious, progressive vision of the human? How might movements for anti-racism, decoloniality, queer liberation, and healing such as #BlackLivesMatter, #ProtectMaunaKea, and #MeToo push a future anthropology out of the ashes of the anthropological past? Finally, what are the limits and possibilities of the anthropological imagination?

Across subfields, we find truths in patterns of human behavior, language, evolution, and cultural worlds. Industry-positioned anthropologists do this by extending the boundaries of the discipline not as an administrative solution to job shortages but as a source of intervention and knowledge production. Increasingly, anthropologists who make use of the scientific method question how status and identity help to decide which facts come to represent truth. How might quantitative researchers use our methods to identify patterned truths, and what responsibility do we hold in challenging conventional wisdom about these patterns? What responsibility do we have to both our colleagues and larger publics, to push toward increased transparency and ethical grounding in our data collection, analysis, and presentation?

Pedagogy is a key medium for the communication of anthropological truths. Which (and whose) truths are foregrounded in our curricula? What are the possibilities for a liberatory pedagogy in a precarious, “post-truth” era? Conferences, museums, organizing spaces, and classrooms are sites where pedagogy and various forms of communication can help us interrogate the performativity of truth. How might anthropologists conceive of truth performances? Might visual, aural, and choreographic performances during AAA sessions offer anthropologists alternative genres for truth-telling and truth-making that provoke discussions about responsibility?

In accordance with the urgency of the year’s theme, the questions posed in this call for papers do not have easy answers. The hope is that those who submit proposals will take up these questions and engage in collective thinking and imagining about the truths we hold, the truths we challenge, and the responsibilities we bear in co-creating a free and more equitable world. All panel proposals should have a statement about how the panel has incorporated the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and/or analysis of power.

Executive Session proposals have already been selected and speak directly to the theme “Truth and Responsibility.” To practice the critical reflexivity this call for papers invites, we asked that Executive Session submissions explicitly address the diversity of session participants, such as organizational/institutional affiliation, career stage, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, class, religion, national identity, and gender. Proposals for Executive Sessions that demonstrated a commitment to equity and inclusion and/or a clear analysis of power (i.e. anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacist, decolonial, anti-ableist, feminist, anti-transphobic, anti-xenophobic, etc) were given priority. We are excited to be in conversation with residents of the Baltimore region and look forward to the discussions, performances, and actions generated by the dynamic group of anthropologists attending the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting.

“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

invited talk

Responsibility and Truth: What Would June Do (WWJD)?

The first two decades of the 21st century have seen a global resurgence of social movements and popular uprisings, including Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, #BlackLivesMatter, #NoDAPL, #MeToo, and other struggles against empire, capitalism, state violence, white supremacy, settler colonialism, and gender violence. These movements have brought back into focus the vital role of organizing in diagnosing and ultimately transforming our contemporary social conditions, relations, and collective futures. The effects of organizing have also fundamentally shifted the terrain in which we think about and do anthropology. The proposed Executive Roundtable invites much needed reflection on the contemporary stakes of doing anthropology in a historical moment that is defined by the impact of global organizing work, and considers the ways organizing in its various forms both shapes and complicates a critical disciplinary praxis. This roundtable convenes an intergenerational group of practicing anthropologists including current graduate students, junior, and senior scholars, whose scholarly work and political commitments span geographic regions (North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa) and whose community organizing and advocacy experience addresses anti-racism, decolonization, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, queer liberation, prison abolition, gender violence, and reproductive justice. We take up this year’s theme of “Truth and Responsibility” by interrogating the ways contemporary organizing models and demands different practices of accountability, action, and commitment for anthropology and anthropologists. We consider anthropology’s historic engagement (or lack thereof) with organizing and activism as a methodological and ethical practice. We ask how the disciplinary legacies of “activist,” “decolonial,” “public,” or “engaged” anthropologies illuminate the possibilities and limits of anthropological thought and practice, and reveal sites of transformation? Participants offer firsthand experiences related to their organizing work within and beyond anthropology and the ways this has shaped their methodological praxes of “fugitive,” “feminist,” “decolonial,” and “abolitionist” anthropologies, and “home/work”. Grounded in these reflections on organizing as anthropological method, we reckon with what contemporary activism can offer ethnography and the anthropological imagination; ways ethnography can productively contribute to organizing efforts and the communities anthropologists develop solidarities among; and institutional and professional barriers to integrating organizing into the theory and practice of anthropology. Our overarching aim is to inspire disciplinary experimentation and imagination of how to evolve anthropology in response to and in solidarity with the changing needs of our field and our broader current social and political conditions.

Organizing as Anthropological Method: Toward a Critical Disciplinary Praxis For Our Time

Historically, academia has paid little attention to mentorship. How does one learn to mentor grad students? What does it mean to be a good mentor? Most mentors of grad students have had no training in mentorship per se, and were themselves trained in a radically different job market context. At the same time, most grad student mentors have followed an academic career track, giving them skills to advise students in how to pursue academic jobs but little experience or knowledge about how to use an anthropology degree outside this sector. Over the past few years, the number of events and even businesses (e.g. Beyond the Professoriate) intended to help students navigate transitions away from academia has ballooned, demonstrating a marked interest and need for helping graduate students learn how to apply anthropological skillsets beyond academic anthropology. This event differs in its focus not on the students considering non-academic careers but on the mentors who work with those students. As more and more grad students seek guidance with pivoting toward alt-ac and non-academic jobs and the job market context shifts dramatically, it’s not just students who are seeking guidance in this brave new world. It’s the mentors. This roundtable discussion among several scholars with a strong track record of mentorship for alt-ac students will offer insights, guidance, and strategies for mentors of graduate students seeking to better equip the students they work with to confront shifting challenges brought about by the neoliberalization of the academy, increasing precarity of academic and teaching labor, a global pandemic that has brought about major changes to how we work. While addressing challenges, the event will be constructive aiming to discuss both challenges and emerging opportunities for trained anthropologists outside academic contexts. This event is the first in a new series and longer conversation SEA is developing to ensure that mentors have up-to-date understandings, skills, networks, and strategies to best address changing graduate student needs.

Mentoring the Mentors: Meeting Graduate Student Needs in a Post-Pandemic World

The rediscovery of the New York African Burial Ground in 1991 forced anthropologists to reckon with our disciplinary history and to reconsider who directs, interprets and voices the histories of enslaved Africans and their descendants in this country. Over twenty years later, near Anson Street in downtown Charleston (South Carolina), thirty-six unmarked graves were uncovered during a construction project. Preliminary analysis indicated that the interred individuals were likely of African descent and buried in the latter part of the 18th century. In a city still grappling with its racial history and current disparities, the ancestors awoke and demanded that we bear witness to the truths they knew, treat them with honor and respect, reconcile past and present injustices and restore their humanity by sharing their stories through our work. The discovery seemed especially pertinent in the wake of the racially motivated murder of nine African Americans by a white-supremacist at Mother Emanuel AME Church, just a short distance from the burial ground, an act that prompted the Charleston City Mayor to voice his commitment to racial reconciliation. In 2017, the Gullah Society, with community and City support, was asked to guide the reinterment process for the thirty-six ancestors. Over the past two years we have sought to sensitively ensure that the identities and lives of these individuals were fully explored in order to better understand the historical experience and shared legacies of African-descended people in Charleston. An interdisciplinary anthropological investigation combining bioarchaeology and genetics with community engagement, educational outreach and arts programs was carried out with the active participation of local communities in order to characterize the lives of these individuals. In May 2019, the Anson Street Ancestors were reburied in the sacred ground where they were originally found. Inspired by conversations generated during a school program, a Naming Ceremony was held by Yorùbá Diviners prior to their reburial. The ancestors were given names inspired by their African regional identities gleaned from mitochondrial DNA and isotopic evidence and documentation of Gullah Geechee names conducted by Dr. Lorenzo Dow Turner (1949). As an acknowledgement of and in defiance of the historical restrictions on African and Gullah Geechee burial practices, the Anson Street Ancestors were carried through the streets of Charleston in a horse-drawn hearse, escorted by drummers and an Egungun masquerade, to a multi-cultural and multi-faith spiritual Reinterment Ceremony witnessed by over 500 individuals. This session showcases the two years of community-based, four-field anthropological research carried out during the Anson Street African Burial Ground Project. The presenters are members of the team that assembled to work with the community employing a racial equity lens through which we sought to undertake research, plan the reinterment ceremony, memorialize these individuals, and share the research findings. The understandings of African ancestry, past and present Gullah Geechee identities, and the life experiences of enslaved Africans that emerge from our work have helped to reshape the way that African descendant histories are presented and shared in Charleston.

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In the Eyes of (our now) Ancestor: Thanks, June Nash, for Lifting Mayan/My Visions

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