February 2004
Rebecca Zarger, Contributing Editor
Anthropology and Environment Section
Sweet Home, Chicago
By Tom Sheridan (Arizona), President A&E
The great Delta bluesman Robert Johnson recorded “Sweet Home, Chicago” in a San Antonio hotel room in 1936. The song sprang from the Great Migration of southern African Americans to the cities of the industrial North, especially Chicago. Seven decades later, the descendants of that migration like Cheryl Johnson of south Chicago’s People for Community Recovery are battling to make their neighborhoods livable after years of industrial pollution and federal neglect. At the AAA’s 102 Annual Meeting last November, A&E sponsored a workshop addressing that struggle. Organized by president-elect Kelly Alley and Melissa Checker, “Crossing the Divide: Anthropologists and Effective Environmental Justice Policy Intervention” brought together grassroots activists, anthropologists, lawyers, and officials from the Environmental Protection Agency to explore collaborative possibilities and forge alliances. The workshop was inspirational as well as instructive–a splendid example of the energy and commitment that makes A&E such an exciting section.
“Crossing the Divide” was just one of many activities sponsored by A&E in Chicago. The section also sponsored a session entitled, "Conservation as Science, Discourse and Practices of Control: Conflict with Indigenous Peoples" and the co-organizers are Harvey Feit (McMaster) and Steve Langdon (Alaska Anchorage).
A&E announced the winners of its various awards at the annual business meeting.
Alison Bidwell Pearce (Anthropological Sciences, Stanford) won the 5th Annual Rappaport Prize ($500) for exemplary ecological/environmental scholarship by anthropology graduate students for her paper, “The Good, the Bad, and the Human: Confronting Our True Selves in Conservation.” The A&E Executive Board also decided to change the format of the Rappaport Prize beginning in 2004. Graduate students will be asked to submit abstracts (or papers) by March 1. Five finalists will then be selected to participate in an annual Rappaport Student Panel at the AAA annual meeting and given $100 to travel there. The finalists’ papers must be submitted by October 1. Judges will select the Rappaport Prize winner ($250) from among the panel finalists after the presentations are given.
Two anthropologists split the $500 A&E Junior Scholar Award: Hugh Raffles (Yale) for “’Local Theory’: Nature and the Making of an Amazonian Place,” Cultural Anthropology 14(3):323-360 (1999); and David McDermott Hughes (Rutgers), for “Cadastral Politics: The Making of Community-Based Resource Management in Zimbabwe and Mozambique,” Development and Change 32:741-768 (2001). Nora Haenn (Arizona State) was runner up for “Nature Regimes in Southern Mexico: A History of Power and Environment,” Ethnology 41(1):1-26 (2002). The A&E Executive Board voted to encourage multi-authored papers for the award provided all authors are junior rather than senior scholars.
The first A&E Julian Steward Award ($500) for the best book in ecological/environmental anthropology was given to Roberto J. González, San José State University, for Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca (University of Texas Press, 2001). Competition was extremely tough because the first award covered books published between 1997 and 2002. Honorable mentions went to three other authors whose works made the top five choices of all three judges: K. Sivaramakrishnan (Washington) for Modern Forests: Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Stanford University Press, 1999); Ben Orlove (University of California-Davis) for Lines in the Water: Nature and Culture at Lake Titicaca (University of California Press, 2002); and Nathan Sayre (Arizona) for Ranching, Endangered Species, and Urbanization in the Southwest: Species of Capital (University of Arizona Press, 2002). From now on, the Julian Steward Award will be granted for books published within a calendar year beginning in 2003.
These activities are testimony to the leadership of outgoing president Bonnie McCay (Rutgers) and the A&E Executive Board. Bonnie handed off her version of the baton–in this case, a Bonzai Blue Spruce–to incoming president Tom Sheridan (Arizona).In return, Tom gave Bonnie a Kokopeli key chain manufactured, appropriately enough in this age of globalization, in China. Diane Russell (World Agroforestry Center, Nairobi) and student representative Crystal Fortwangler (Michigan) retired from the board and were replaced by Steven Brush (UC-Davis, At-Large) and Wendy Weisman (Rutgers; Student At-Large). Kelley Alley (Auburn) joined the board as President-Elect. Year 2004 promises to be just as exciting. The Executive Board demonstrated its strong support for the AAA Committee on Public Policy’s Public Policy Institute Initiative by donating $1,000.
The A&E Conservation and Community Working Group is planning at least two regional conferences---on focusing on southern Africa, the other on the American West. A&E will also select the winner of the first biennial Lourdes Arizpe Award honoring individuals or teams that have made outstanding contributions in the application of anthropology to environmental issues and discourse. We’ll keep you informed about these activities as they unfold. And let us know about your activities as well. See you in San Francisco next November.
Send essays, news, and other information to the section editor: Rebecca Zarger (zarger@fiu.edu), Dept. of Environmental Studies & Sociology/Anthropology, ECS 332, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199.