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Anthropology and the Environment
January 1998
Charles J. Stevens, Contributing Editor
News from the Annual Meeting
The Anthropology and the Environment Section, which now has 343 members, reviewed 54 papers organized into 9 sessions at the meeting in Washington, DC, last November. This is a truly significant number of sessions for such a new AAA Section and reflects the diversity and depth of interests in environmental issues held by anthropologists. The sessions were organized by Daniel Bates (Hunter C-CUNY), and most of the volunteered sessions had as much organizational coherence as volunteered sessions.
A number of items were discussed at both the open forum and the meeting of the Section's Executive Committee, and for the benefit of those who missed the meeting, some of this information is reviewed here. As well as being on the A&E Board of Directors, Barbara Johnston is the Environmental Anthropology Project Director for the SfAA. The SfAA has a number of joint programs with the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and the A&E is interested in developing similar programs that could include jointly sponsored internships and fellowship programs. If any members have ideas about how to develop some programs like the SfAA Environmental Anthropology Fellowship Program or their Summer Internship Program (previously noted in the Section News), please e-mail me (stevens@demog.berkeley.edu), and I will forward your ideas. The Environmental Anthropology 1998 Summer Internship Program application deadline is February 1, 1998. For additional information contact http://www.telepath.com/sfaa/eap/abouteap.html.
Alx Dark has been maintaining the A&E web site. The A&E Executive Board has plans to survey the membership and to complete a list (now partially completed) of the membership's e-mail addresses. It would be a great help if members would send their e-mail addresses to alxdark@altavista.net. The e-mail addresses will be used to inform the membership of new events and to elicit input from members for the monthly newsletter editions. The A&E Section's web site is at http://travel.to/anthenv.
The Section has started the Skip Rappaport Student Paper Prize. In addition to the $500 prize, the student will be mentored to turn the submitted paper into an article for submission to a peer-reviewed journal. The deadline for submitting papers is May 1, 1998, for the first year's competition. There may be an earlier deadline in the future.
The Section is to organize an editorial board to publish, possibly with AAA sponsorship, an occasional papers series. The first of these is expected to be a volume of papers given at the first invited session of the Section (1996 AAA annual meeting, in San Francisco), with review papers by Laura Nader and David Mayberry-Lewis. These selected papers are expected to be provided to the Section members as an advantage of Anthropology & Environment Section membership. In order to pursue this, the Section is seeking a publications editor, along with a program chair and a nominations committee chair. Volunteers or nominations can be sent to my e-mail address, and I will forward these. The Section will be selecting two new board members, a President-Elect and a Secretary, on the spring AAA ballot.
Jessica Glicken, of Ecological Planning and Toxicology Inc (jxglicken@aol.com), recently attended the meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and found a keen interest in having anthropological input into their research and analysis. The scientists in the toxicology community want social scientific input and involvement but do not know how to society such participation. Anyone who has interests in the are of toxicology or desires involvement with this type of research should contact Jessica by e-mail.
Section Activities at the 1998 AAA Meeting in Philadelphia
During the open forum, the membership discussed a number of possible sessions to organize for the 1998 meeting. Some of these proposed sessions are in keeping with the theme of the meeting: population. Clearly, this issue has particular relevance to the interests of the A&E Section's membership. The proposed sessions included continued agricultural intensification in relation to contemporary population change, deforestation and population, biodiversity and population, hunting activities in relation to biodiversity and population, environmentalism, popular perspectives on demography, ecotourism and heritage tourism, security and sovereignty with regard to population and environmental change, urban development and population, communities and resource depletion with population growth, nontimber forest products, displacement and migration, refugees and the environment, nutrition and fertility, cultures of environmentalism, Latino/Latina communities and the environment, population and consumption, indigenous identity and resistance and environmentalism, the history of colonization and environmental policy, rise of issues of indigenous knowledge, intensification of livestock production and the environment, eastern European environmental rhetoric, environmental discourse as a political tool, environmentalism and social movement theory, population concentration and environmental degradation, urbanization as a political ecology and resource access, remote sensing and ethics, ethics and the representation of anthropology to other scientific communities, the human component of long-term environmental research, global climate and population change and cultural transformation. Anyone wanting to organize these sessions, or any other session, should certainly begin contacting A&E Section members now or send an announcement to the web page for distribution. The deadline for paper abstracts and session abstracts is April 1.
Postdoctoral Positions in Urban Ecology at Arizona State
Please see this month's Grants and Support for information on postdoctoral positions to do a long-term study of urban ecosystems in the southwestern US.
New A&E Contributing Editor
Beginning this month (but resulting in the March AN), Edward Liebow (liebow@seanet.com; Environmental Health and Social Policy Center) will be the new A&E Contributing Editor. It is possible that e-mail messages will be sent to the membership at the beginning of every month soliciting submissions of information for the newsletter.