Latino immigrant group and allies travel in caravan to rally in Birmingham, AL. Taken June 2011 in Tuscaloosa, AL. Photo courtesy Gwendolyn Ferreti

Read this month’s thematic series on boundaries on the Anthropology News website. This month we’re pleased to start the series with essays by:

• Gwendolyn Ferreti-Manjarrez | Attrition via Enforcement: Snuffing Latino Immigrants Out of the Deep South
• Alissa Jordan | Border Agents of the Beyond in Haiti
• Peter C Little | Boundary Movements for Toxics Advocacy
• Mark Maguire and Fiona Murphy | Boundaries of the State and Politics of Everyday Life in Ireland
• Francesca Meloni and Marouane Tlili | Making Ourselves: The Re-creation of the Self in Political Revolutions in Italy and Tunisia
• Silvia Noguerón-Liu | Learning Across Boundaries: Mobilizing Resources for Immigrant Learners through Community Technology Programs
• Joowon Park | “I Can Send That Money to My Mother”: Remittances, Telecommunication and Post-Migration Strategies of North Koreans
• Monica L Smith | Boundaries in Action: The Past and Present of Delimitation

Be sure to check the AN website throughout February for more in this series by Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, Joshua Craze, Britt Dahlberg, Gabrielle Oliveira, Maria Sapignoli, and Nayantara Sheoran.

Share what you think about any contribution to AN – rate any post on the AN website by clicking on the stars that appear under the title. AAA members are also invited to post comments to start or contribute to a discussion about any of the essays.

Transplanting a genetically modified rice plant from sterile media in the laboratory to soil in the biosafety plant room. Canada, 2005. Photo courtesy Christina Holmes

Read this month’s thematic series on anthropology and biotechnology on the Anthropology News website. This month we’re pleased to present essays by:

• Murray J Leaf | Biotechnology, Agriculture and Anthropology: How We Can Help
• Glenn Davis Stone | Genetically Modified Crops: From St Louis to India
• Liz Fitting | Risk, Regulation and Resistance: The Ongoing Debate over Genetically Modified Corn in Mexico
• Jennie Doberne | Egg Freezing in Israel: A Biotech Breakthrough?
• Christina Holmes | A Hands-on View of Biotechnology: What Do We Learn from Seeing It as a Form of Work?

Share what you think of the essay - rate any post on the AN website by clicking on the stars that appear under the title. AAA members are also invited to post comments to start or contribute to a discussion about any of the essays.

Even with anthropology’s great diversity of fields and specializations, methods anthropologists use to plan and conduct research usually end up being identified as qualitative, quantitative or a hybrid of both. Anthropology News seeks to visit the relationship between these two methods for an upcoming thematic series on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods. Topics may include—but are not limited to—how these approaches currently are manifested in anthropological research; how they may be combined to get the most out of anthropological work; and how anthropologists use these methods to make their own contributions in interdisciplinary collaborations. AN seeks proposals that address these and other issues surrounding how anthropological research is conducted.

Guidelines

To participate, email a 300-word abstract and 50–100-word biosketch to AN Managing Editor Amy Goldenberg. We welcome proposals from current AAA members for In Focus commentaries, Teaching Strategies articles, Field Notes pieces, photo essays, photo features, news stories, interviews and more. Proposals for photo essays should also include up to five high resolution photographs (tiff or jpg), each with a caption and credit. Multimedia submissions are especially welcome for www.anthropology-news.org. All accepted contributions will be published online at www.anthropology-news.org for up to 1,600 words, with flexible space for supplemental artwork and other supporting files. Thematic contributions for print AN will be determined based on when completed In Focus contributions of 1,100–1,300 words in length are submitted.

Selected authors will be notified of their status in early February and full articles will be due March 1.

Proposal deadline: January 13
Early submissions are encouraged.

Anthropology has a long history of examining kinship in a myriad of ways. As notions of kinship and family have continued to evolve around the world, it is time to ask what anthropology has to say today about family and kinship. Anthropology News invites proposals for an April 2012 thematic series exploring family and kinship from a uniquely anthropological perspective. Topics may include—but are not limited to—new family structures, reproductive technologies, adoption, marriage, divorce, re-marriage and generational relationships. Contributors may also explore how governmental policies or societal movements affect families in action, such as China’s one-child policy or the US Defense of Marriage Act. AN seeks proposals that address these and other issues surrounding this fundamental area of anthropological research.

To participate, email a 300-word abstract and 50–100-word biosketch to AN Managing Editor Amy Goldenberg. We welcome proposals from current AAA members for In Focus commentaries, Teaching Strategies articles, Field Notes pieces, photo essays, photo features, news stories, interviews and more. Proposals for photo essays should also include up to five high resolution photographs (tiff or jpg), each with a caption and credit. Multimedia submissions are especially welcome for www.anthropology-news.org. All accepted contributions will be published online at www.anthropology-news.org for up to 1,600 words, with flexible space for supplemental artwork and other supporting files. Thematic contributions for print AN will be determined based on when completed In Focus contributions of 1,100–1,300 words in length are submitted. Selected authors will be notified of their status in early January and full articles will be due February 1.

Ralph Bolton during his time in the Peace Corps. Photo courtesy Paul Doughty

Throughout 2011, the Peace Corps has celebrated its 50th anniversary. This is an important milestone for anthropology as well. Anthropologists were directly involved with in its design and implementation, and through the years many anthropologists have regularly joined as volunteers, and former volunteers regularly pursue careers in anthropology. This month’s contributors include Ralph Bolton; Ian Colquhoun, Alex Totomarovario and Andrew Walsh; Scott Freeman; Frank Hutchins, Ronald A Schwarz;  Katherine McCardwell; and Veronica Muoio and Michael Sheridan.

Check back to the AN website through December for additional contributions by Kathleen Gillogly, Sean Kois, Courtney Kurlanska, and Jon Wolseth. AN thanks all these contributors who have helped recognize the intricate relationship between anthropology and the Peace Corps as this milestone year comes to a close.

All AN content is available at www.anthropology-news.org during the publication month, plus one month after, and subsequently through AnthroSource. Be sure to rate articles and share your comments on the AN website.

Anthropology has a long history of examining kinship in a myriad of ways. As notions of kinship and family have continued to evolve around the world, it is time to ask what anthropology has to say today about family and kinship. Anthropology News invites proposals for an April 2012 thematic series exploring family and kinship from a uniquely anthropological perspective. Topics may include—but are not limited to—new family structures, reproductive technologies, adoption, marriage, divorce, re-marriage and generational relationships. Contributors may also explore how governmental policies or societal movements affect families in action, such as China’s one-child policy or the US Defense of Marriage Act. AN seeks proposals that address these and other issues surrounding this fundamental area of anthropological research.

Guidelines

To participate, email a 300-word abstract and 50–100-word biosketch to AN Managing Editor Amy Goldenberg. We welcome proposals from current AAA members for In Focus commentaries, Teaching Strategies articles, Field Notes pieces, photo essays, photo features, news stories, interviews and more. Proposals for photo essays should also include up to five high resolution photographs (tiff or jpg), each with a caption and credit. Multimedia submissions are especially welcome for www.anthropology-news.org. All accepted contributions will be published online at www.anthropology-news.org for up to 1,600 words, with flexible space for supplemental artwork and other supporting files. Thematic contributions for print AN will be determined based on when completed In Focus contributions of 1,100–1,300 words in length are submitted. Selected authors will be notified of their status in early January and full articles will be due February 1.

Proposal deadline: December 14
Early submissions are encouraged.

Montreal Convention Center

Saturday afternoon, a four-hour session of the AAA Annual Meeting was devoted to the major uprisings that have taken place in 2010 and 2011 in many regions of the Middle East and North Africa. This session, titled “Revolution in the Middle-East and North Africa: Anthropological Perspectives”, aimed at challenging the explanatory models proposed by the media by offering more complex interpretations not solely based on political or economical rationales. More precisely, anthropologists discussed how identities, affiliations, symbols, and historical precedents played a role in shaping the ongoing events in the Arab World.

For example, according to Farha Ghannam, political corruption, underemployment and social media are non-negligible aspects of the “Arab Revolution”, but are insufficient to account for the unprecedented level of public mobilization unless the changes in thought and feelings of individuals are addressed. Also, the discussion of the form and rhetoric adopted by the revolutionary movement allows Mongher Kilani to study the “Arab Spring” as an anthropological revolution, which has in many ways redefined the participants’ identity and socio-political ideals. New perspectives on the uprisings were also offered through the study of the ways individuals made sense of the unfamiliar revolutionary reality, and how symbols were manipulated and appropriated by diverse parties as a means to negotiate and dispute power.

Moreover, the scope of inquiry was geographically and temporarily broadened through the discussion of the political realities and past uprisings of less mediatised regions like the Yemen, Jordan and the Emirates. However, one of the most interesting aspects of the session was not how anthropology can help rethinking the “Arab Spring”, but how the “Arab Spring” can help rethinking anthropology.  Some scholars have struggled to write about those seemingly incoherent events which are yet unresolved and into which they are much involved. This challenge has highlighted difficulties in the application of some anthropological tools; some forms of “revolution” might be necessary in the discipline.

Vignettes of foetuses being asked to serve as “expert witnesses” in determining when life begins, through the reproduction of the “socially dead” and the tracing of reproductional debris, to an elision of counting embryos and counting sheep as both serve to lessen anxiety, the first two days of the AAA conference have offered a plethora of insights into the domain of “New Reproductive Technologies” (NRTs) or “Assisted Reproductive Technologies” (ARTs).

The papers I have thus far had the privilege of listening to cover widely divergent branches of the emergent field of technological assistance in the domain of human reproduction, as my summaries above show. However, in this blog post I would like to highlight some themes I have found to be particularly poignant.

Connections between morality and legality thread their way through discussions of NRTs.  When questions of surrogacy are addressed, the moral dichotomies portrayed in popular media coverage “good” (altruistic) and “bad” (commercial) are reflected in legal determinations of what kinds of surrogacy are legal and illegal. The depiction of NRTs as purely medical interventions solving medical problems by medical practitioners is brought into question when the social, religious and legal considerations of the technologies are evaluated.  Individual desires shape the use of NRTs, often contrary to the intentions of the policy makers regulating their usage.  Additionally, reflections on the notions of what the purpose of recording information is for in assisted reproduction, whether that be in decisions over anonymity, or the number of embryos currently being used for stem cell research, have been analytically stimulating. 

Reproductive technology, is very far from being a utilitarian tool. Rather it is shaped by the social, moral, ethical, religious and legal mores and norms of the people using it, those reflecting on its usage and those determining how others can use it.

Thursday morning in the Palais des Congrès. Photo courtesy Amy Goldenberg, Anthropology News

In the morning of the second day of the AAA conference — and the first for many — the activity is buzzing: novice students display poster research and intermingle with those passing by amid established anthropologists who have come to share ideas.

This morning I attend the first panel of the day, Beyond the Social Life of Things: Natural Resources and Emergent Personhoods, organized by Sabrina A Peric with discussant Sylvia J Yanagisako. Inside there is an air of attentive nervousness and patient intellect among those presenting their papers and the audience dispersed throughout the room. The papers follow a trajectory of ethnographic practice among mining industries, crossing continents through each paper. This morning we have our tentative focus on individuals and community through our shared field experience. Smiles cross the room as we gain insights from one another.

For many attendees this is likely the first panel of the conference at Pales des Congrès this year in Montréal. On a personal note, this is my initiatory meeting with the American Anthropological Association, and with the commotion among attendees this morning it is refreshing to know that at present we are in the best of company –– our colleagues at Pales des Congrès.

Anticipation of what will come throughout the week in the brisk city stirs through the winding halls and expositions, as we invoke conversations with fellow scholars to discuss our ideas of ethnography over coffee.

Undergraduates from McGill University volunteering as student ambassadors. From left: Adam Flincher, Mathew O'Reilly, Morgane Suel, and Julian Tucker. Photo courtesy Alice Walker

The weeks leading up to the meeting, I was unsure what to expect. Several of my professors and other students were attending, but social media and news sources had been relatively quiet leading up to the event. Wednesday morning Twitter (#AAA2011) exploded with messages about delayed flights, advertisements for upcoming speakers and tremendous dialogue about the free poutine provided by the City of Montreal; I had to get down there to see what all this was about.

McGill doctoral student, Qiuyu Jiang, presents her poster called "The Stigmas of Female Sex Workers in China." Photo courtesy Alice Walker

From my background as an undergraduate student in a small department, seeing more than five anthropologists in the same room is an anomaly. Upon arriving at the meeting and witnessing thousands of students, professionals and enthusiasts flowing in and out of lecture halls was incredibly overwhelming.

A stark contrast to the chaos in the hallways, the silence and calmness of each lecture hall makes it easy to focus on the fascinating lectures at hand. With only fifteen minutes each, speakers summarized months of fieldwork and research, then, after realizing they have about a minute left, thumb past multiple pages to get to the complex theories and observations that are the crux of their presentations. The audience, ears pricked, hastily scribbled notes and nodded subconsciously as they digested the complex material.

Arriving at the event without any prior experience was incredibly intimidating, but well worth the initial discomfort. Not only are the papers being presented incredibly interesting, but each lecturer clearly cares deeply about their research and speaks about it passionately. In my first day I was able to hear a huge array of topics from sex practices in Senegal, to modern superstition in Italy. It’s easy to lose track of time, but such a fascinating experience that I cannot wait to return to tomorrow!