Podcasts from the SfAA

One measure of effectiveness in applied anthropology can be found in the “stories” of those who have used anthropological knowledge to assist people in “creating culture” through the discovery of new ways to better sustain ourselves. Unsustainable behaviors reduce the effectiveness of a culture as a continually adaptive process. Sustainability requires a vision and practice not to consume beyond the renewal capacity of the landscapes upon which they are dependent. If culture is dynamic and purposeful, then sustainability requires continuous “culture change” into the future. Another level of sustainable behaviors is illustrated by the perceived need to intervene, or not, in the “culture,” of subordinated peoples. wbaber@anthro.ufl.edu (TH-74)

CHAIR: BABER, Willie L. (U Florida)

Roanoke City Public Schools Project: Identifying Next Steps.

Identity described as an outcome of inadequate acculturation, or as the loss of functional adaptation altogether, is believed to lie at the center of a significantly lower graduation rate of African Americans in Roanoke City Public Schools, and in the U.S. at large. This paper describes the Roanoke City Public Schools Project as an intervention defined by the community itself. The way forward is the organization of the Roanoke City community, involving less then 100,000 people, and the community’s discovery of interventions. The process, thus far, appears to be largely independent of culture-debate per se; this early outcome may be a reflection of the cultural diversity inherent in Roanoke community’s commitment to solving the problem. wbaber@anthro.ufl.edu (TH-74)

NIGH, Ronald (CIESAS)

Material Rationality and the Defense of Native Maize: Citizen-Farmer Solidarity in Chiapas, Mexico.

Seven out of ten Mexican adults are suffering from diet related illness that also affects nearly half the country’s children. Diabetes type 2 is now the principal cause of death in both urban and rural environments. The reason for this situation is the profound transformation of consumption habits resulting from a food policy that has explicitly favored the invasion of industrialized ‘junk foods’ and actively discouraged regional food production. Citizens are reacting, however, by renovating the bonds of solidarity of the traditional agro-food systems through the creation of a system of organic farmers markets and other local business relations. rbnigh@gmail.com (TH-74)

IDRIS, Mussa (U Florida)

Trust and Entrepreneurship Among the “New” African Immigrants in the United States.

“Trust” is central to successful entrepreneurial activities among the ‘new’ African immigrants (after 1965) in the U.S. Drawing from among entrepreneurial experiences of the ‘new’ African immigrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal in the U.S., I assert that successful immigrant entrepreneurs are cognizant of the need for “trust” and building it up in cultural, social and economic networks among themselves and beyond. Created and re-created networks depend upon high levels of “spirit” and “practice” of “trust” in social relations made out of wider cultural experiences. These experiences serve the common good, and may be seen as alternatives to unregulated markets that promote an ideology of “trust” in ways that do not actually exist, certainly not for African immigrants. mussa@ufl.edu (TH-74)

Moles, Jerry

DISCUSSANT: DOWNING, Theodore (U Arizona)

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Session took place in Santa Fe, NM at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in March 2009.