I’m going to be writing an article for the SfAA newsletter in the coming week and would really, really appreciate your comments and thoughts about the post below! Please!

This project launched at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the SfAA and was continued at the 2008 Annual Meeting.  Between the two meetings we’ve captured audio recordings of over 25 sessions covering a wide variety of topics and sub-disciplines of anthropology.

The site has had over 9,500 visitors from all over the world according to the WordPress dashboard and we have over 100 people that have signed up for updates about new podcasts.  From time-to-time I receive emails from listeners telling me that they value the project or to suggest an addition, etc.  I also monitor the websites that link here and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to learn that some of them are not anthropology websites!

All this to say that I do not feel like I really have an idea of the value people place on this project, who is listening/reading, or how the audio recordings are being used.  I’d really love to though!  So, I invite all of you to share your stories- you can do that by replying to this post or by sending me an email.  I’d like to share this information in the August issue of the SfAA Newsletter and to post a summary here.  If you’d like to remain anonymous please email the story to me rather than posting here.

I’d love to hear about:

• How the podcasts (audio recordings) have helped you
• If you’ve learned about something really interesting
• Non-anthropologists that listen
• How you’ve used the podcasts (as a reference in a paper, to supplement a class, to learn about something new, etc. etc.)

I’d like to thank our 2008 SfAA Podcast project sponsors.  It was their donations of resources that made the project possible!

Sticker Giant donated custom stickers that had the podcast logo on them.  We passed out the stickers at the 2008 Annual Meeting.  The stickers were a fun way to advertise the project and looked great!

The University of North Texas Department of Anthropology sponsored the project for its second year.  The department provided the project with four sets of microphones.  Additionally, the department provided free printing for our information sheets and flyers.  Both of these generous donations saved the project a lot of money!

The Society for Applied Anthropology also sponsored the project.  Without the help of the SfAA the project would not be possible!  The SfAA Office donated a lot of their time to helping with the project and also provided complimentary SfAA membership to all of the hard working podcast team members.

We’re looking for 2009 sponsors.  We’ll post updates on how you may sponsor the project and the benefits of doing so.  If you own a business or can provide free materials please consider sponsoring the project :)  You can email me at JenCardew (at) gmail (dot) com.

The second round of the SfAA Podcasts has come to a close now that all 17 sessions from the Annual Meeting have been published.  The website has had over 3,300 visitors since April 2008 and almost 10,000 visits since it was launched in April 2007!

The 2008 project was a great improvement from its launch in 2007.  There were 7 more sessions recorded in 2008 then in 2007 which greatly improved the value of the project as a whole.  By far the best addition to the 2008 round was the SfAA Podcast team.  This team of seven worked very hard to make the project successful by recording at the conference and helping with the production of the podcasts and blog posts.  The podcast team is a great opportunity for students to become involved in the project, is great experience for them in terms of leadership and networking, and helps to ensure that the podcast project will continue.

I’d like to thank our team- you all did an amazing job and it was a great honor to work with you!  The team also gave invaluable feedback about the project which will be incorporated next year

I will be working on creating a committee for the SfAA Podcast project in the coming months.  This committee will oversee the project and serve as a sustainable model for the podcasts.  I will also be focusing a great deal of attention in scouting donations and funding opportunities for the project- the project is in need of funding or it may not be continued!

Lastly, I’d like to thank those of you that have commented and sent emails about how you are using and enjoying the podcasts.  This information is important because it helps me to demonstrate the value of the project.  Please consider commenting if you haven’t already (see this post).

Thanks for another great year of podcasts! I will continue to post updates on this website throughout the year!

Shortcut to 2007 and 2008 Podcasts

Donna M. Romeo (FritoLay Inc)

Opening Hearts, Opening Minds: Anthropology’s Role at JC Penney Co.
Over the past few years, an increasing number of anthropologists have entered the realm of consumer research. Today, applied anthropologists who focus on consumer issues are found working in a broad array of Fortune 500 companies, consulting firms, advertising agencies, and academia. All have accumulated “know-how” - valuable insights, and tales both good and bad, from the field. How does applying anthropology within business transform business, anthropology, and anthropologists? What insights can be garnered from these experiences, both positive and negative? This session will explore methodological, practical, and ethical issues practitioners confront in applying anthropology to solving real world business problems.

Patricia L. Sunderland and Rita M. Denny (Practica Group LLC)

Business Practices and Anthropological Practice
Anthropologists in business must come to grips with the practices of business writ both large and small. This paper addresses some of those practices through telling the tale of a particular study (when not much went right). More generally this paper examines some of the business practices which perplex, enmesh and sometimes ensnare: the ubiquitous practice of consumer segmentation; the multiplicity of voices having a say in project implementation; making pre-interview “homework” assignments work methodologically and theoretically. In the end, we suggest that success can only be achieved by embracing and managing the tensions - between meeting needs of business and retaining one’s anthropological voice.

Mark Rogers and Liz Rogers

Beyond “Ethnography” in Consumer Anthropology
Ethnography has been increasingly touted in the business world as the next great tool to get close to customers, develop successful new products, and even drive winning business strategies. At the same time, ethnography is gradually being transformed from a social scientific research approach into a branch of market research that simply involves “going out into the field.” As a result, anthropologists working in business run the risk of being pigeonholed as the researchers who bring back field data for others to interpret and act (or not act) upon. This paper discusses the relationship between gathering and reporting on field data (consumer ethnography) and understanding and championing field-based insights (consumer anthropology) through case studies from the authors’ personal experiences.

Maryann McCabe (Cultural Connections)

Representation of Consumers: Feat and Folly in the Luxury Car Market
Anthropologists conducting consumer research have the responsibility to recognize the role of material culture in identity and sociality. Representing consumers affects their ability to create the self through material culture. Representation in consumer research has focused largely on targeting minority groups. This paper expands the topic to include mainstream segments who buy luxury goods. Contrary to criticism of luxury purchases as overly materialistic, this paper relies on the concept of objects saturated with symbols that give meaning to consumer practices. Two case studies demonstrate the impact of hearing the consumer’s voice and re-frame the materialism debate in terms of agency and meaning management.

Charles Darrah (San Jose State U)

Discussant

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David W. Haines (George Mason U)

Migration Policy from the Margins
Recent American immigration policy debates focus largely on employer interest in cheap labor, migrant hopes of a better life, and the mixed responses of local communities. However, it is also important to assess the issues that are not discussed, particularly migration that is not directly labor related or that is not firmly permanent. Such a view from the margins of the current debate suggests that the most crucial issues may not involve high profile problems in labor migration but rather the broader social flows of migration and how they reflect alternative American - and global - futures.

Caroline B. Brettell (S Methodist U)

• Email cbrettel at smu dot edu
• telephone 214-768-4254
  
• personal website link

Immigration Policy/Incorporation Policy: The National/Local Divide
In this panel, participants engage aspects of the immigration debate and immigration reform. Although anthropologists have much to say on this matter because we work in local places, are attuned to a multiplicity of voices, and focus on the symbolic as well as the material dimensions of social life, our perspectives are rarely heard in comparison with researchers in other disciplines - economics, sociology, and political science. Anthropology can offer a unique understanding not only of why immigration impassions so many people, but also why reform is stalled and what solutions might actually move us forward.

Beth Baker-Cristales (Cal State-Los Angeles)

Global Contradictions: Democracy, the State, and International Migration
Politicians and policymakers do not simply craft laws; they formulate the language used to conceptualize the boundaries of legality and the state, shaping the discursive construction of personhood and the terms by which these understandings circulate in public life. Anthropology, with its attention to the ways public meanings are constructed, is particularly well suited to explore this construction of legality and its wider implications. This paper will examine some of the contradictions between the rhetoric surrounding immigration and immigration reform in the United States with the realities of transnational migration and economic globalization

Josiah Heyman (U Texas-El Paso)

Engaging in the Human Rights Policy Process at the United States-Mexico Border
Over the past three years, I have been closely engaged with coalitions advocating for human rights improvements in U.S. border immigration law enforcement. I draw on some previously untapped strengths as an academic scholar, transposed to new uses. These include a teaching-based ability to summarize and simplify key findings on immigration and border issues, and a research-based ability to track down key bodies of knowledge, such as best practices in police review and oversight. I place these observations in the wider context of current debates over comprehensive immigration reform in the United States and other prosperous nations.

Leo R. Chavez (UC-Irvine)

Protesting the Latino Threat Narrative and Claiming Citizenship
In 2006, immigrants marched to protest proposed immigrations laws and for recognition of their social and economic contributions to society. This paper focuses the meanings of citizenship that the immigrant marchers were enacting, and the way national symbols can be interpreted as symbols of both unity and division. National flags and the language used to sing the national anthem became symbols of controversy. The immigrant marchers wore symbols to oppose the way the Latino Threat Narrative represents their lives. For others, the U.S. flag and national anthem became symbols of the perceived dilution of the rights and privileges of citizenship because of the immigrants’ presence

Jara Carrington (U New Mexico)

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the U.S. Legal System and Undocumented Immigrant Youth from Central America
All too often, minors who are not eligible for immigration relief in the U.S., and have no familial support in their home countries or are fearful of returning home are still removed from the U.S. Legal professionals working with these youth must negotiate a precarious balance between protecting their clients and working within the bounds of U.S. law. In most regards, the structure of the legal system in the U.S. directly prohibits the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as it may relate to undocumented immigrant youth, in any meaningful way

Please click here to listen to the audio

The first 25 minutes or so of this audio is lower in quality and volume than the rest due to microphone problems.

Ruth Finerman and Carolyn Sargent were the session chairs for this panel. This session was organized by the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Lenore Manderson (Monash U)

Containing Fear: Notes on an Economic History of Epidemics and Infection Manderson’s Paper
Within a year of the twin tower collapse, anthrax, SARS, mad cow disease and bird flu, were being reported and rumors of smallpox were spreading. Like HIV and earlier virulent infections, fear of bioterrorism was complicated by racist rhetoric to manufacture a climate of anxiety. In this presentation, I contrast and illustrate the consistencies of local and inter-government strategies of surveillance and control of infectious disease to sustain colonialism, commerce and industrialization in the 19th century, with the mechanisms of intelligence and containment today.

Elisha P. Renne (U Michigan)

The Politics of Polio
National vaccination programs against infectious childhood diseases have had variable success, depending on the state of health care infrastructure and on public perceptions of the relative risks of disease and immunization. In global eradication programs, which focus on stopping the transmission of a single infectious disease such as polio, international, national, and local organizations - with their own political perspectives - are involved. In Northern Nigeria, where wild poliovirus and, more recently, vaccine-derived poliovirus both exist, efforts to eradicate polio reflect the intersections of these different perspectives as well as the authority and power of those promoting or protesting this initiative.

Douglas A. Feldman (SUNY-Brockport)

Professor, Department of Anthropology,

The College at Brockport, State University of New York,

350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, NY 14626 USA;
(585) 395-5709; dfeldman (at) brockport (dot) edu

The Politics and Stigma of Global HIV/AIDS Feldman’s Paper
Many governments have, and continue to, minimize the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in their country in order to preserve their “national pride” while exacerbating the level of stigma in the population. People with HIV/AIDS are frequently stigmatized as “carriers” blamed for having the disease, and judged as immoral for who they are and what they do. Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, governments and organizations (whether democratic or repressive) have used - and continue to use - the disease to promote their political ideology (whether progressive or conservative).

Sandy Smith-Nonini (U NC-Chapel Hill)

The (Drug-resistant) Consumptives Are Coming!: Policing the Bacillus
This paper discusses an engaged anthropology project on organizing by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in North Carolina. In 2004 FLOC achieved a contract with the country’s largest guest worker program, which involved transnational organizing. The union now has offices in Mexico and the United States. This has brought about changes in media coverage, public awareness, and worker empowerment. Volunteer drivers assist hundreds of workers to meet monthly in six regions of the state each growing season. The union just began a new campaign aimed at Big Tobacco and undocumented farm workers who are the majority of the state’s agricultural labor force.

Charles L. Briggs (UC-Berkeley)

Virtual Crises of Infectious Diseases: The Biocommunicable Production of a West Nile Virus “Threat”
Infectious diseases crises are now deeply mediated - most people “experience” epidemics through news coverage. This paper examines extensive efforts by San Diego public health officials to generate coverage of West Nile Virus during four years with four human cases and no deaths. It develops a framework of biocommunicability in discussing how different parties imagine the production, circulation, and reception of WNV knowledge and analyzes the mediatization of biomedicine - how institutional practices are transformed to continually create biomedical objects for insertion into media coverage. Neoliberal states can thus “speak” about health even as their role in providing healthcare erodes.

Mark Nichter (U Arizona)

Community Response to Avian Flu in Central Java, Indonesia
This presentation examines how different stakeholders respond to the threat of Avian Flu H5N1 in Central Java. After providing background on backyard and commercial poultry farming, I highlight competing views of which birds are responsible for and most susceptible to the disease. Reasons for widespread non-compliance to government avian flu protocols are examined. Also discussed are rumors circulating about whether the disease is new, who is responsible for it, and who is capitalizing off it. Considered are challenges faced by the Indonesian Government as it tries to promote community -based biopreparedness in the context of decentralized decision making
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Once again, thank you Russell for doing a great job getting the audio for this session ready! One of our podcast team members, Jonathan West, was in this panel

This is part II of a two part series, you can find part I here.

Ben McMahan (U Arizona)

Participatory GIS Mapping in Environmental and Alternative Health Research
Participatory GIS mapping expands on general utility of GIS research in Anthropology by triangulating participant observer gathered data with community perspectives, expertise, insight, and commentary, encouraging an active and interactive discussion of concerns with local stakeholders using maps and diagrams as visual shorthand for the locally relevant issues. Additionally, emergent technologies of representation (e.g. interactive web mapping) catalyze additional interaction and participation. I present results from two participatory mapping projects: one on environmental health and alternative fuel technologies research in Ambos, Nogales, and the other on the distribution of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners in Tucson, Arizona.

Louise Badiane (Bridgewater State Coll) and Pamela Erickson (U Connecticut)

Visual Methods for Understanding the Concepts of Gender and Sexuality among Youth: Collage Making and Presenting
Gender and sexuality are abstract ideas that are difficult for youth to capture in words, but understanding these underlying concepts is crucial to designing reproductive health programs that are culturally appropriate and meaningful. We used small group collage making and presentation to explore Filipino youths’ (N=96) ideas about gender and sexuality in Bohol, Philippines. Participants in small group workshops made collages that portrayed the essence of female and male gender and sexuality and explained the collages to each other. We describe the process and analysis of the data that allowed us to summarize how youth think about gender and sexuality.

Alison Scott (Jiann-Ping Hsu CPH, Georgia Southern U)

The Fight in My Stomach: African American Women’s Visual Representations of HIV
The HIV epidemic in the United States is growing amongst poor, African American women in the Deep South. However, the voices and life experiences of women affected are largely absent from the literature in Public Health. In this study, poor, African American, HIV-positive women from New Orleans depict the clinical and social experience of HIV through drawings of the disease inside their bodies. These visual images and accompanying narratives, in conjunction with data from unstructured interviews, photo elicitation, and freelisting, provides valuable insight for clinicians and social service providers. The study is framed by Kleinman’s concept of illness meanings, and utilizes Guillemin’s framework for analysis of drawings.

Kristina Peterson (U New Orleans) and Jonathan West (Ctr for Hazards Assessment Response & Tech (CHART)

Everyone Has an Agenda: Issues Surrounding the Creation of Participatory Relationships
Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Village de l’Est, a Vietnamese community in New Orleans East, immediately began to make plans to rebuild in a sustainable manner, but their efforts were stymied when toxic waste dumps began to spring up nearby. In a collaborative effort with NOAA and CHART-UNO, the community will be learning GIS mapping in order to identify toxic dumps and monitor their effects on the community’s environment. The mapping will be used in public advocacy and policy formation. Our presentation will explore the process in developing a participatory relationship in order to achieve the vision of a community.
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Many thanks to Russell Willems for putting together the audio for this session!

This is part I of a two part series, you can find part II here.

Aline Gubrium (U Mass-Amherst)

Exploring Reproductive Health through Digital Storytelling: A New Lens on Participant Observation
Digital storytelling is a technique used in community-based participatory action research that increases community members’ participation in studies of local community issues. In this presentation I look at the use of digital storytelling as a way to foreground women’s reproductive and sexual health experiences. By teaching women how to construct digital stories about their reproductive and sexual health experiences, I am seeking to use a narrative approach as a way to illuminate the complex circumstances that affect their own reproductive choices and experiences. I also note the ways that digital storytelling may elicit an alternative standpoint on participant experiences than might be expressed in an interview or focus group data collection methods

Jo Tacchi and Emma Baulch (Queensland U of Tech)

Digital Storytelling in South Asia and Indonesia: Developmentalism vs Alternative Visualities
This paper reports on findings from a research project called Finding a Voice, a collaboration with 15 UNESCO and UNDP-supported community ICT centers in South Asia and Indonesia. We are investigating the most effective ways of articulating information and communication networks (social and technological) to empower poor people to communicate their “voices” within marginalized communities. We are researching opportunities and constraints for local content creation. Twelve embedded researchers in the local centers are trained to bring an ethnographic perspective to their ICT center’s work - a perspective that is open to local meaning makings and contests Developmentalism’s authoritative claims to objectivity.

Zoe Clayson (San Francisco State U)

2006 Poder Popular Youth Digital Story
A team of Mexican-American youth from two rural agricultural communities in California produced a digital story by utilizing photos collected during a photovoice process and by synthesizing the input from community members and peers at the photovoice discussion sessions. Through our project we were able to engage youth in a way that was relevant to their life experiences. Their goals were to 1) share their perspective on their communities; 2) show youth contributions to positive changes; 3) change the image adults have of youth; and, 4) challenge community members to inspire them to get involved.

Krista Harper (U Mass-Amherst)

Across the Bridge: Using PhotoVoice to Investigate Environment and Health in a Hungarian Romani (Gypsy) Community
What does it mean when residents of the same town, citizens of the same country, live in quite different environmental conditions? The environmental justice frame problematizes this form of inequality and challenges the stereotype that poor people and members of minority groups do not care about the environment. I present findings from a recent research collaboration with a grassroots Romani (Gypsy) community organization in northern Hungary that used the PhotoVoice methodology to generate knowledge and documentation related to environment, health, and the dynamics of social exclusion and environmental inequalities.

Diane J. Schiano (Palo Alto Rsch Ctr)

Towards Technology Design with Seniors in Mind
Seniors are the fastest-growing segment of the population worldwide. Technology is required for participation in many of society’s functions these days, but it’s rarely designed with seniors in mind. This paper presents results from a broad-based, open-ended inquiry into issues around seniors’ experiences with technology. Interviews at a California senior activity center explored daily patterns of technology use, highlighting needs and interests, frustrations and delights. Extended observations focused on everyday patterns of practice in and around the center’s computer room. Some striking varieties of experiences and strong generational patterns suggest important issues on which ethnographic research can inform technology design.

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This was a very popular session and the room quickly filled up with a lot of people.  The excitement and chatter in the room was picked up by the microphone and thus this recording is not the best quality.

This session was organized by the International Network on Displacement and Resettlement (INDR). Please visit INDR’s website at www.displacement.net and you may contact Ted Downing, Executive Director, via email downing (at) u.arizona (dot) edu.

Michael Cernea (World Bank)

Building Blocks for a New Resettlement Economics: Investments, Benefit-sharing, Reparations and Enhanced Compensation
What can anthropologists contribute to structurally reforming the recurrent flaws in the planning and financing of post-displacement resettlement? Anthropologists and sociologists should not only criticize the impoverishment risks, but also boldly advance constructive policy recommendations to amend existing policies and practices. The absence of economic feasibility analysis in many RAPs makes the “plans” for livelihood improvement statements untested by rigorous economic/financial analysis and leads to under-financing of resettlement. Social scientists (non-economists) should systematically pursue closer cooperation with their economist colleagues. Anthropologists must advocate new building blocks for sound resettlement economics: 1) Investments in resettlers’ welfare; 2) Allocation of a share of project benefits; 3) Financial reparation to correct wrong-doings; and 4) Enhanced compensation levels.

Chad Dear (U Montana)

Understanding Systems of Impoverishment Risks: Comparing Risks of Displaced People and Those Resisting Displacement

Anthony Oliver-Smith (United Nations U Inst for Env & Human Security)

Behind the Economics of Displacement: Challenging the Philosophical and Ethical Assumptions
This paper frames the issue of impoverishment from displacement and resettlement in terms of the fundamental precepts, and their philosophical origins, behind the economics of displacement and resettlement. The philosophical, ethical and behavioral assumptions behind western economics, including perspectives on land, property, labor and development as they appear Education in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Anthropological engagements with protected area conservation have taken many forms in recent years. As local environmental knowledge continues to decrease among younger generations, education that emphasizes human-environment connections is seen in foundational writings of western economics are scrutinized in terms of their ethical implications for the economics of eminent domain, displacement and resettlement. The paper examines the variety of arguments and assumptions that underlie the various positions on the taking of property by the state or other interests.

Elizabeth M. Kobus (S Methodist U)

email: ekobus (at) smu (dot) edu phone: 214-768-4137

Perceptions of Risk and Their Implications: The Delay of the Bujagali Hydropower Project
Uganda’s Bujagali Falls Hydroelectric Power Project is one of the most ambitious projects planned in sub-Saharan Africa in decades. There has been approximately six years between the relocation of those affected by the dam and the date of this analysis. This paper looks at both the causes of this delay and how it affected the community surrounding the project’s site. It will explore the power relationships between the World Bank, NGO’s, the state of Uganda, and those directly affected by the dam’s construction. Set within the theoretical frameworks of Douglas, Foucault, Beck, and Giddens this paper adds to the understanding of the processes of development and their consequences when lateral organizations are transformed into powerful players in the hierarchy of international development.

David Turton (U Oxford)

Present and Future Displacement Risks Facing the People of the Lower Omo Valley, Southwestern Ethiopia
In 2005, the Ethiopian government handed over the management of the Omo National Park to a Netherlands-based company, in an agreement which gives the company near total control of the park, including law enforcement activities. In April 2007 an Italian energy company was awarded a 10,000ha. site in the far south of the Omo basin for the production of biofuels, with an option to take over a further 60,000 ha. within the next five years. Meanwhile, a 240m high hydro-electric dam on the Upper Omo is scheduled for completion in 2011. This paper will consider the threat of forced displacement and loss of vital economic resources faced by the people of the Lower Omo Valley as a result of these developments.

Theodore Downing (U Arizona)

Discussant

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Thank you Russell, for preparing this session!

Susan Tratner (SUNY-Empire State)

Perspective from the Business Department: Marketing Ethnography Methodology
Many anthropologists are employed by businesses, using excellent methods and appropriate theories and providing valuable results. Others in these businesses or academic fields believe they are using “ethnography” without really understanding it and are not knowledgeable of either the history or the theories that could assist their work. Individual papers demonstrate the range of ways that anthropological methods and theories have been used to assist and critique businesses. Participants come from academia, private consulting and industry. Discussion will focus on the way in which well designed and executed anthropologically generated insights can benefit the business environment.

Ruth Sando (Barbara Perry Assoc)

Team Ethnography: A Tool for Market Research
The challenge for organizations is not only creating new solutions, but also reaching consensus across different parts of the organization with different goals and agendas. For the outside consultant, providing insights and innovative new ideas will not result in action if the organization cannot change successfully. “Team Ethnography,” an approach developed over 15 years ago
by an anthropologist working in private industry, has been used successfully in many well-known companies. Employees become partners in the research process, facilitating their expertise and guaranteeing their cooperation in the implementation process. The process and several examples will be provided.

Timothy de Waal Malefyt (BBDO Worldwide & Parsons, New Sch for Design)

Success in Ethnography: Reframing Client Knowledge
The novelty of ethnography as a methodology for marketing and branding purposes has long since waxed and waned. From experience as director of an ethnographic group for a major advertising agency, success is determined by carefully managing client expectations and by reframing the invisible to make it more visible and by keeping the client more informed. He wrote a case study of a project with a Fortune 100 company to be discussed by the Omnicom members. This project was a success as it ensured transmission of knowledge, the agency strategist was involved and the brand story was brought to life

Ari Shapiro (Hall & Partners Healthcare)

Writing Business: The Politics of Corporate Ethnography
In the increasingly commodified world of marketing research - where ‘insights’ are attainable in syndication and ‘methodologies’ are mass-marketed - corporate executives look to ethnography to add that special sauce. Occult, unpronounceable, and too expensive for the average corporate research budget, executives have understandably high expectations for corporate ethnographers. In that context, the work of delivering ‘successful’ research demands a complex mix of researcher intuition regarding client expectations, client education about what ethnography is (and is not), and ‘actionable,’ research-based insights into the business issue at hand.

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Big thanks to Diana on the podcast team for doing all of the work to get this podcast published!

Tracy L. Meerwarth (General Motors)

Disentangling Patterns of a Distributed Life
As a researcher who studies how work gets accomplished in the spaces workers inhabit, I have become keenly aware of the patterns of behaviors and emotions that arise from my experience as a mobile worker. In this paper, I explore re-conceptualizations of physical space and the shifting changes in relationships, which emerge with increased mobility. I argue that personal conflict
arises when trying to manage culturally valued concepts such as integration and mobility simultaneously. I illustrate how insights emerging from this conflict can inspire and inform directions of future research at the intersection of work and mobility.

Julia Gluesing (Wayne State U)

Identity in a Virtual World: The Co-evolution of Technology, Work and Lifecycle
This paper illustrates how technology, work and lifecycle co-evolve and how the integration of work, family and friends into virtual workspaces can open up new conceptualizations of personal identity. An identity that is discretely bounded and that is dependent on physical surroundings can give way to one that more closely aligns with the lived experiences of mobile work and life. If we think of identity as multiple, as open to possibility, and as flexibly responsive to multiple cultures and contexts, we can alter our ideas about work and its relationship to our lives in today’s hybridized, dematerialized and decontextualized world.

Brigitte Jordan (Palo Alto Rsch Ctr)

Performing Multilocality: Reflections on a Distributed Life
Transitioning from fixed employment to mobile consultant status is no longer unusual for knowledge workers. In my case that transition played itself out in two “home/workplaces,” one in the Silicon Valley of California, the other on the tropical Pacific coast of Costa Rica. I explore some of the opportunities as well as some of the challenges that emerged as worklife and personal life became fused and fully integrated. Finally, I consider the implications of the fact that the meaning of “work” and “non-work” has changed in my life and quite possibly in the lives of other “integrated nomads.”

Loril Gossett (U Texas-Austin)

Loril presented her paper via telephone at the SfAA. She was nice enough to provide us with a video though, you can find it here:

Occupational Websites as Locations for Remote and Mobile Worker Culture: An Examination of Temporary Worker Websites
Individuals employed in nonstandard work arrangements (e.g., independent contractors, temporary workers, telecommuters) often find themselves working alone, without people from their home companies to interact with face-to-face on a regular basis. Although these workers may be physically separated from their peers, their participation on occupational websites allows them to connect with other people in similar work situations. This paper examines the role that such websites play in developing a work-related culture for remote and mobile employees. This paper focuses on websites such as notmysdesk.com and temp24-7.com, to illustrate how these online communities foster a distinctive occupational community for temporary workers.

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This session was organized by the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Tom Leatherman (U S Carolina)

The Costs of Conflict: Uneven Effects of the Sendero Luminoso Revolution in Southern Peru
In the 1980s-1990s, Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) waged war against the Peruvian state. Extreme levels of poverty, food insecurity, undernutrition, infant mortality and morbidity, as well as a failed agrarian reform, created at least part of the context of vulnerability within which the revolutionary movement grew and flourished. This paper outlines these contexts of vulnerability in one area of the southern Andes studied during the outset of the revolution, and discusses the real and potential costs of the revolution on food insecurity, nutrition, health, and social trauma.

Nicole Berry (Simon Fraser U)

Legacy of Violence: The Challenge of Safe Motherhood in Post-Civil War Guatemala
For almost a decade, the emphasis in the global Safe Motherhood campaign has been on improving state provision of biomedical care for birth. But what happens when the historical relationship between the state and a people has been marked by violent oppression? This paper explores this question through an examination of efforts to decrease soaring rates of maternal mortality among Mayan women in Solol, Guatemala. Mayan villagers’ current reluctance to use obstetric resources in the Solol state hospital is partly a legacy of over 20 years of violent civil war in Guatemala.

Carolyn Sargent (S Methodist U) (Audio portion not included in podcast due to poor audio quality - sorry!)

Maternité, Liberté, Egalité: Burning Cars and Health Costs in the Immigrant Suburbs of Paris
The November 2005 immigrant uprisings in France involving North and West Africans generated diverse explanations for this urban violence, including extremist Islam, unemployment, hopelessness, and failure of the “republican” model of integration. This paper will examine how state policies generate health risks, such as lead poisoning, street accidents, exhaustion, stress, and reproductive rivalries among Malian migrants in Paris, France. As migrants, wives, and mothers, Malian women confront and routinely negotiate structures of inequality, of which they and their families come to carry the physical marks. Accordingly, they epitomize the unresolved hardships of immigrant experience reflected in the recent riots.

Ellen Gruenbaum (Cal State-Fresno)

No Safety: The Destruction of Health in Darfur, Sudan
War and political violence in Darfur, Sudan, have destructively undermined health and security in the past five years, emerging from smoldering conflicts and unsolved problems of the past. The Alma-Ata goal of health as a fundamental human right and the Millennium Development Goals for demonstrable improvement in measures of health and social well-being seem worlds away from the conditions of terror, rape, torture, war, and displacement facing the people of Darfur. Based on historical, religious, and ethnographic perspectives, this paper offers an anthropological analysis of the causes and consequences of this violence, and considers the potential social dynamics for peace-making.

Marcia C. Inhorn (U Michigan)

The Public Health Costs of War in Iraq: Lessons from Post-War Lebanon
Since March 2003, the United States has been at war in Iraq, with tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi casualties. However, the casualties of war and the embodied suffering of the Iraqi people cannot be measured only by body counts. This paper will examine six major public health costs of war, examining how these have played out in two war-torn Middle Eastern nations. The paper uses the example of post-war Lebanon to examine the potential consequences of war in Iraq, including such controversial issues as the effects of depleted uranium (DU) on human health.

Diane E. King (U Kentucky)

Fieldwork and Fear in Iraqi Kurdistan
This paper offers stories of fear I experienced while doing fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan between 1995 and 2002. The experience of fear was a collective, mutual experience, and both an engenderer and a collapser of social distance. People demonstrated that they felt distance from me when they told me stories of violence as though my American-ness meant I could do something for them. They collapsed social distance by including me in their plans for escape should a hypothetical fear be realized. This paper analyses the experience of conducting fieldwork in a setting under ongoing threat from multiple sources of violence.

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This is a session organized by the Society for Medical Anthropology. Below you’ll find the chairs of the session as well as the speakers in the order of their presentations.

For Love and Money: Employment Opportunities in Medical Anthropology.
(Medical Anthropology Student Association Forum)
Nationally and internationally recognized practitioners will offer personal reflections and guidance, focusing on careers in medical anthropology. Panelists will discuss their professional training, how they got their jobs, and activities they perform in their work. They will also outline some of the skills students need to be employable. The floor will then open for questions and discussion. A reception will follow, allowing students to meet one-on-one with the practitioners on the panel, to solicit personal career guidance.

Chairs:

Katherine Pritchard (U Memphis) Second year graduate student in Medical Anthropology at The University of Memphis -

kpritchard2 (at) netzero (dot) net

and Amorita E. Valdez (U Michigan)

Panelists:

Lenore Manderson (Monash U)

Short bio: PhD, FASSA, FWAAS, holds appointment as Research Professor both in the School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, and School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She works as a medical anthropologist and social historian, and in sociology and public health, on gender and sexuality, infectious and non-communicable disease, among minority populations in Australia and in Asia and Africa. She was awarded an inaugural Australia Research Council Federation Fellowship, and in association with this has been conducting research in Australia and Southeast Asia on gender, chronic illness, disability, social relationships and well-being. She was a founding member of IASSCS and President from 2001-2003. She has worked extensively to strengthen institution capability and develop research capacity in the social sciences, gender and health. In 2008, she is the Hillel Friedland Fellow and Visiting Professor, School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of the Witwatersrand. She is the author, among many other works, of a series of articles on the social history of medicine in colonial Malaya, and of Sickness and the State: Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya, 1870-1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1996).

Jamie Russell (TN State DOH)

Douglas A. Feldman (SUNY-Brockport)

Professor, Department of Anthropology,

The College at Brockport, State University of New York,

350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, NY 14626 USA;
(585) 395-5709; dfeldman (at) brockport (dot) edu

Barbara Rylko-Bauer (Michigan St U)

Merrill Singer (CHIP, U Connecticut)

Christina Blanchard-Horan (Soc & Sci Systems Inc)

Suzanne Heurtin-Roberts (DHHS)

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Susan Wright was invited to speak at the SfAA by Consortium of Practicing and Applied Anthropology Programs (COPAA).

Susan B. Hyatt (Indiana U)

Introduction

Susan Wright (U Aarhus)

Making Anthropological Application Count in a Global Knowledge Economy.
European governments are subjecting universities to a reform frenzy, spurred by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s postulated “global knowledge economy.” Denmark’s strategy makes universities a driver of this economy, presses them to respond to the “surrounding society,” turn “ideas into invoices,” and produce employable graduates quickly. “Application” appears central to such strategies. Yet systems to measure performance and differentiate funding reproduce old hierarchies between “pure” and “applied” in which the latter “counts” for little. After reviewing initiatives to develop applied anthropology in such contexts, the earlier experience of a United Kingdom organisation “Anthropology in Action” is used to suggest an alternative approach.

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On the off chance that any of you will see this in the next 15 minutes I wanted to let you know that Dr. Paul Farmer will be on 60 Minutes tonight, May 4.  Dr. Farmer was in the Global Health in the Time of Violence session in our 2007 round of SfAA podcasts.

If you miss the show tonight you can download after 11 pm EST as a podcast, here is the link to do that.

From the 60 Minutes website:

“DR. FARMER’S REMEDY - Dr. Paul Farmer dedicates his life and career to delivering medical treatment in Third World countries, saving countless lives in places like Haiti and Rwanda. Byron Pitts reports. Catherine Olian is the producer.”