SCA Section News from the Anthropology Newsletter of the AAA
November 2008

Society for Cultural Anthropology
Stacy Leigh Pigg, Contributing Editor

Highlight of Events at the AAA Meetings, San Francisco

There’s an exciting set of SCA events at the San Francisco AAA annual conference this year. Here are some of the highlights.

The SCA Business Meeting is Friday, November 21, 6:15-7:30 in Continental Parlor B. Maybe a business meeting does not sound all that exciting, but SCA maintains its tradition of short, friendly and happy meetings. The meeting is open to all members; new and student members are especially welcome. Find out about the innovations afoot for the journal Cultural Anthropology and join us in fêting Ilana Feldman (George Washington U), winner of this year’s Cultural Horizons Prize for her essay “Difficult Distinctions: Refugee Law, Humanitarian Practice, and Political Identification in Gaza,” which appeared in Cultural Anthropology in February 2007 (22[1]: 129-69). More on this in next month’s column. A cash bar reception follows the business meeting at 7:30-9:00 in Imperial B ballroom. SCA is co-hosting this event with our friends in AES and SANA. Enjoy the best part of the AAA conference: catching up with old friends and meeting new people.

We welcome you to attend the session “Corporate Oxymorons: Entry Points into the Ethnography of Capitalism.” Organizers Peter Benson and Stuart Kirsch write that “ethnographic research can unpack oxymoronic claims about social responsibility by revealing social, health, economic, informational and environmental quandaries (often catastrophes and crises) that the tobacco, petroleum, mining, information and pharmaceutical industries help make… [and] anthropologists can provide a critical perspective on how corporate oxymorons are legitimized at multiple levels, often with government support, despite their contestation by various social actors, agencies and movements.” Papers will be presented by Suzana Sawyer, Adriana Petreyna, Kim Fortun, Chris Kelty, Peter Benson and Stuart Kirsch, with discussion by Robert Foster.

 “Transnational Networks, Globalization and Social Movements” is a double session that asks “How do grassroots actors circumvent the powers of the neoliberal state and mobilize resources through and against it? How do the politics and structural conditions of locality inform and shape grassroots social movements? How do existing political structures co-opt social movements? What are the ways activists organize, contest and resist globalization and create their alliances through transnational and regional networks? What kinds of knowledge and epistemological models do the produce in doing so?” Papers will be presented by Arturo Escobar, Lamia Karim, David Graeber, Marisol de la Cadena, Tatsuro Fujikura, Jeffrey Juris, Xochitl Leyva, Michal Osterwall, Giuseppe Caruso and Mary Sterpka King, with discussion by John Burdick and Lynn Stephen.

“Questioning Expertise: Reflexivity, Ethics and Etiquettes of Power” is another double session that “brings a diversity of scholarly perspectives—science studies, social medicine, social justice and policy studies—to the problem of expertise at play in a range of social welfare domains….[T]he papers…examine how experts and professionals reflect upon and struggle with etiquettes of power, the limits of their knowledge, and the ethics of their practice.” Papers will be presented by Lorna Rhodes, Thomas Chivens, Susan Shaw, Summerson Carr, Tara Schwegler, William Lachiotte, Arthur Mason, Carry Saunders and Victor Braitberg, with discussion by Steven Epstein, James Faubion, John Clarke and Dominic Boyer.

 “The Culture Concept in Political Struggle: Insights from the Middle East and North Africa” is a panel that “explores how different constructions of the culture concept, and contexts of its invocation, enable or disable certain kinds of politics.” It will include papers by Lara Deeb, Paul Silverstein Amahl Bishara, Jessica Winegar and Ahmed Kanna, with discussion by Kelly Askew and Fred Myers.

“Experiential, Branded and Lifestyle Spaces: Dialogues Between Architecture and Anthropology” examines the “experience economy” involved in producing environments that “use traditional technologies of environmental theming (embodying narratives in spatial sequences, designing immersive sensory environments, scripting the performances of employees) to put the visitor at ease, making him or her feel comfortable, appealing to his or her senses, psyche, and innermost feelings.”

On Wednesday evening, the session “Radical Theater as Cultural Intervention: Exploring Art and Politics in Anthropology’s Center Stage” redefines the “presentation” at AAA conferences by “blurring conventional distinctions between text and performance, stage and auditorium, performer and spectator, action and dialogue, art and life.” Performers will “delve into the effects of drama on the AAA 2008 theme of ‘Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement.’” Presenters explore the potency of radical, open theater and dance to stir public debate, affect public policy and create social change.