United States

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

To (Homo)Sex the Family or What’s Queer about Kinship?

new media

india

queer

Truth and Responsibility
“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

Many consider anthropology to be a holistic social science dedicated to cross-cultural understanding as a way to reduce bigotry and more fully comprehend “what it means to be human.” Others push against this readily circulated origin story, arguing that “human” remains a highly contested, political category—evident as the presumed set of rights and protections associated with the “human” continue to be stripped away violently in the communities in which some of us live and work. Which violent histories and epistemologies must anthropologists take responsibility for in telling truth(s) about the discipline’s development? How do the dual histories of settler colonialism and slavery continue to influence anthropological thought and practices? In these political times, how can anthropologists throughout the globe work to secure a capacious, progressive vision of the human? How might movements for anti-racism, decoloniality, queer liberation, and healing such as #BlackLivesMatter, #ProtectMaunaKea, and #MeToo push a future anthropology out of the ashes of the anthropological past? Finally, what are the limits and possibilities of the anthropological imagination?

Across subfields, we find truths in patterns of human behavior, language, evolution, and cultural worlds. Industry-positioned anthropologists do this by extending the boundaries of the discipline not as an administrative solution to job shortages but as a source of intervention and knowledge production. Increasingly, anthropologists who make use of the scientific method question how status and identity help to decide which facts come to represent truth. How might quantitative researchers use our methods to identify patterned truths, and what responsibility do we hold in challenging conventional wisdom about these patterns? What responsibility do we have to both our colleagues and larger publics, to push toward increased transparency and ethical grounding in our data collection, analysis, and presentation?

Pedagogy is a key medium for the communication of anthropological truths. Which (and whose) truths are foregrounded in our curricula? What are the possibilities for a liberatory pedagogy in a precarious, “post-truth” era? Conferences, museums, organizing spaces, and classrooms are sites where pedagogy and various forms of communication can help us interrogate the performativity of truth. How might anthropologists conceive of truth performances? Might visual, aural, and choreographic performances during AAA sessions offer anthropologists alternative genres for truth-telling and truth-making that provoke discussions about responsibility?

In accordance with the urgency of the year’s theme, the questions posed in this call for papers do not have easy answers. The hope is that those who submit proposals will take up these questions and engage in collective thinking and imagining about the truths we hold, the truths we challenge, and the responsibilities we bear in co-creating a free and more equitable world. All panel proposals should have a statement about how the panel has incorporated the goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and/or analysis of power.

Executive Session proposals have already been selected and speak directly to the theme “Truth and Responsibility.” To practice the critical reflexivity this call for papers invites, we asked that Executive Session submissions explicitly address the diversity of session participants, such as organizational/institutional affiliation, career stage, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, class, religion, national identity, and gender. Proposals for Executive Sessions that demonstrated a commitment to equity and inclusion and/or a clear analysis of power (i.e. anti-imperialist, anti-white supremacist, decolonial, anti-ableist, feminist, anti-transphobic, anti-xenophobic, etc) were given priority. We are excited to be in conversation with residents of the Baltimore region and look forward to the discussions, performances, and actions generated by the dynamic group of anthropologists attending the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting.

“Truth and Responsibility” is a call to reimagine anthropology to meet the demands of the present moment. The imperative to bear witness, take action, and be held accountable to the truths we write and circulate invites us to reflect on our responsibility in reckoning with disciplinary histories, harms, and possibilities. To whom are we giving evidence and toward what ends? For whom are we writing? To whom are we accountable, and in what ways? We are thrilled to announce the theme of the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD: Truth and Responsibility.

technical paper

Following market reforms in the late 1970s, the People’s Republic of China has undergone a host of dramatic transformations. The nation’s skyrocketing GDP has recently been echoed in the growth of the charitable sector: reports show that philanthropic giving in China rose from just over $400 million to almost $25 billion over ten years, while the number of domestic foundations grew from around 1,000 to over 6,000 over the same period. On the one hand, China seems to be telescoping two hundred years of equivalent economic development in the U.S. into a mere four decades, and the recent emergence of contemporary philanthropy and social finance appear as a natural stage in this development process•comparable to the charity of American Gilded Age titans such as Carnegie and Rockefeller. On the other, ethnographic attention to this “new phenomenon” challenges the oversimplification of this Eurocentric narrative, and opens up nuanced insights into a variety of ways of doing “philanthropy” or being “philanthropic” that not only draw from imported Western models, but also invoke “traditional” Chinese values and practices, socialist ethics, and novel modes of giving that are appearing in elite circles as well as at the grassroots level, and at intersections of religious and secular, governmental and non-governmental organizations and initiatives.  This panel explores the growing sector of philanthropy and social finance in China. Conversations about philanthropy in this context enlist interlocutors not only in the charity space but also those from nonprofits, private industry, and financial services. We address topics related, but not limited, to the following questions: Is philanthropy Chinese? How are Chinese charitable and social finance practices part of global flows of artifacts and ideas? What are the geopolitical and economic stakes and implications of Chinese philanthropic projects, both nationally and abroad? What is the relationship between philanthropy, charity, and hybrid modes of “doing well and doing good,” such as impact investing and social entrepreneurship, in China? Might examining the intersection of markets and morals in China contribute novel perspectives to scholarship such as that on exchange and reciprocity, the political economy of capitalism, and disaster and crises? How do conversations and practices taking place in China push at the edges of, and even move us beyond, the term/concept of “philanthropy”? We envision a wide-ranging discussion about the ways in which China, through philanthropy and social finance, participates in imagining humanity’s future on this shared planet.

Philanthropy and Social Finance in China




 The past thirty years has witnessed a phenomenal growth of philanthropic activities in the form of education aid, disaster relief, poverty alleviation and so forth in China. As one of the state-promoted virtues since the late 1980s, the notion of aixin (loving heart) has become the widely recognized discourse and virtue that explains altruistic good deeds and has been central to the state’s evaluation of desirable citizens. Nevertheless, the state-promoted virtue of aixin has never evenly distributed among Chinese citizens. Rather, it is a class-based program that often motivates the urban middle-class to “hand down” their aixin to the poor and the disadvantaged. It is also a highly gendered program that often associates aixin with the normative yet stereotypical image of women who are perceived to be caring, loving and compassionate. The aim of this paper is two folds. First, it unpacks the gendered processes of the emergence of aixin in the field of philanthropy when the masculine image of a socialist man who dares to sacrifice his life for a just/socialist cause was replaced by feminized image of women who embody the virtue of aixin. Second, through ethnographic studies of women who work in philanthropy, I argue the feminization of the field of philanthropy also result from the postsocialist condition when women, including the middle-class women, are pushed to take less-demanding and more flexible jobs so they can take care of their families. 

Engendering aixin: philanthropy and gendered practice of compassion in postsocialist China


“You don’t have to be old and wealthy like Bill Gates or Jack Ma; young people can be philanthropists, too!” This was the original appeal that ‘Ready to Give,’ a Chinese youth-founded philanthropy education organization, used to recruit university students and recent graduates into their “smart giving” summer program in 2016. By 2019, RTG was no longer pushing to expand the definition of philanthropy/cishan, but shifted to a focus on social impact (shehui yingxiangli), and encouraged participants to think of themselves as “changemakers” (translated into the neologism: chuangbianzhe). In fact, the “learning-by-doing” model of the organization, which provides participants with the opportunity to give away $20,000 USD in charitable grants means that young people become “changemakers” through “making change.” This paper examines a particular form of what I call “philanthropic subjectification” that takes place as participants undergo personal transformation, and come to understand themselves as new kinds of social actors. Based on ethnographic data from the practice of “evaluation” at RTG, as well as survey and interview data produced for the organization, I engage the lens of performance theory, and draw out tensions between measuring the subjective experience of personal transformation versus measuring the outcomes of the participants’ actions. 

New Generation of Philanthropists in China: Making Change and Feeling Changed



In March 2020, weeks after the coronavirus outbreak in Hubei and the lock down in Wuhan, the local government rushed to announce a “gratitude education” campaign, to teach local denizens to “thank the General Secretary, and thank the Chinese Communist Party.” The subsequent negative pushback online forced the original announcement and social media posts to be swiftly deleted. In this paper I examine how the term gratitude (“Gan-en”) has become intrinsically linked to gifts, philanthropy, and propaganda in recent China, especially in the wake of disaster. Yet as Leinaweaver (2013) notes, “ingratitude” is often more revealing of the fault lines in relations and hierarchies in different societies, and the episode of pushback in Wuhan is revealing of how power dynamics are constantly negotiated between community and state, all the while being filtered by state controlled digital media. By looking at examples of how denizens around China responded in the wake of tragedy vis-a-vis the central government push to be “thankful”, I uncover tensions between how people and state imagine disaster and reciprocity, with implications on what philanthropy might mean in China today.

Politics of (in)gratitude in times of Covid



We outline a research project on virtual ethnography and digital living archives of global Chinese philanthropy, building upon the work of an independent documentarist working specifically on this topic for 12 years. We draw upon virtual ethnography as a research method, particularly use of digital communication technology for ethnographic research, and digital “living archives”, which are ongoing collections that transcend the relatively fixed standards of description, control, and taxonomy of traditional archives, through inclusion of material sampled from the open, porous, and informal universe of user generated content, including social media and materials from other participatory platforms. This digital living archive contains materials that trace over 30 years of Chinese philanthropic history across 7 countries, covering all the leading and most well-known Chinese philanthropists and philanthropy foundations, and documents not only their self-promoted events, but also much of their relations and interaction with the Chinese government and civil society. Our preliminary work on a small sample of this digital archive enabled us to show the significant value of conducting virtual ethnography of global Chinese philanthropy using these materials, which enable scholars to transcribe statements verbatim and examine them with significant nuance through access to audio-visual materials. The extraordinary value of such methods and materials can in turn enable important scholarly contributions to the fields of visual anthropology, global studies, and other critical social sciences and digital humanities. 

Virtual ethnography and digital archives of global Chinese philanthropy

Recent years have seen a surge of anthropological research on mental health in the Global North and South. Anthropological approaches have grappled with syndemics, critically engaged with Global Mental Health, considered the intersections of disability, race, class, and other identities in mental health care, and have questioned the effects of possibly traumatic fieldwork experiences on the mental health of anthropologists themselves. Anthropologists have also charted the impact of governmental and quasi-governmental organizations’ distribution of mental health care services, the growth of psychiatric user/survivor movements, and activism(s) at the intersection of mental health services, education, and criminal justice systems. Given increased interest in this field, our double panel asks: What does the future of the anthropology of mental health look like? What theoretical perspectives and methods will ground our research practice in the years to come? What role does the anthropology of mental health play in critically interrogating, sustaining, enhancing, and - in certain instances - undermining formal and informal projects of mental health and wellness? Recent and up-and-coming work conducted by junior and senior scholars engaged with research on mental health will include theoretical approaches grounded in decolonial perspectives, Mad Studies, religious studies, community engaged research, posthumanism, and critical medical anthropology. It will also include an analysis of mental health policy reform and their effects in various countries, as well as a discussion on experimental ethnographic methods in the anthropology of mental health, such as drawing, time-diaries, and song-writing.

New and Emerging Perspectives in the Anthropology of Mental Health II

Attempts at unsettling normative (re)presentations of disability have only recently begun to incorporate Mad-positive perspectives. My fieldwork across various peer support networks in Boston investigates peer support as a medium through which the chronically mentally ill and/or psychiatrically disabled (re)constitute a sense of self, in light of the persistent challenges•internal and beyond•to the legitimacy of their own subjectivity. From navigating various markets of care, peers come to know and negotiate experiential knowledge in a way that both questions and compliments hegemonic psychiatric explanatory models. Leveraging my illness narrative as a passport into these diverse microcosms of convalescence exemplifies a kind of “interlocution-based fieldwork” (Borneman 2011) whereby processes of self-disclosure as a mentally ill person studying “other” kinds of dis-eased people is politicized and potentially disabling. Considering identity-development as intrinsically reflexive, I use this paper to identify how tensions around my positionality as simultaneous research instrument/research subject influence the validity of my intersubjective research contributions. Fusing auto-and-net-nography, I reflect upon pervasive methodological challenges around exploitation, as well as ways in which they might be more ethically reckoned with. 
Keywords: auto-ethnography; disability; madness; peer support; qualitative research ethics; recovery

Anthropologist, Heal Thyself: Conducting Qualitative Research as Both Research Instrument and Research Subject

This research study focuses on the strategies, experiences, consequences, and stereotypes that non-monosexual individuals (also known as Bi+) must adopt and/or endure while disclosing (also called "coming out") their sexuality in new intimate partner encounters/relationships and its impact on bi+ mental wellbeing. Although bi+ individuals make up more than half of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, their identity is often rendered invisible, invalid, and/or untrustworthy among both homosexual and heterosexual communities (also called monosexuals). Bi+ as a group are also thought to experience the poorest mental health outcomes in terms of depression, anxiety, overall sense of wellbeing, and internalized bi-negativity in comparison to both monosexual populations. This research will explore how strategies of disclosure or non-disclosure affect the sense of overall wellbeing and self-reported mental wellbeing of bi+ individuals by examining their experiences within the larger LGBTQIA2S+ and heterosexual communities, their chosen disclosure strategies, and intimate/romantic partner encounters

Bisexual+ Disclosures: Strategies for "Coming Out" in Intimate Partner Relationships and its Implications for Mental Wellbeing

Syndemics literature addresses illness burdens formed from unique social conditions in particular groups, creating disease clusters and vulnerable bodies.  However, many social determinants of health tend to intersect and result in exacerbated morbidity, specifically in the instance of the caregiver and partner relationship. In this paper I address the mental health challenges of caregiving for a partner with a progressive illness. I argue that the syndemic relationship of our combined illness burdens, structural challenges in securing disability resources, and assumptions of traditional social support networks pulled us further into vulnerability and health degradation. I use a critical-interpretive perspective to discuss the structural violence in medicalization and its resulting internalization of self, creating a discordance in trust between service providers and assistance seekers.  Based on ethnographic notes as well as follow up interviews, disability records and health statistics, I analyze the process from applying to maintaining disability services, and advocating for my partners autonomy while struggling to address my own health needs. Even in the most compassionate of American health care advocacy situations, support can be unreliable and contingent on strict economic guidelines. Family caregivers are met with continual scrutiny over intent and ability, and struggle with increased isolation, poverty, and stigma.  My paper contributes to the anthropological discussion of caregiving and mental health by illustrating how barriers to creating and maintaining a therapeutic space for both partners in a long-term disability family setting create exponential detriments for all involved. Keywords: syndemics, disability, social services, mad studies, queer studies, ethnography

Our Long Ride on the Short Bus: Syndemics, Support, and the Social Security Disability System

Peru is currently undergoing an important institutional transition regarding mental health. Since 2016, the government has started transitioning state-sponsored treatment for several mental illnesses from an asylum/institutionalization model to a community mental health model. To effectively address mental health afflictions and other psychosocial conditions in the wake of de-institutionalization, the goal is to build at least one hundred community mental health centers around the country. Thus far, twenty-nine have been built. This reform also aims to place mental health in the public agenda and address the stigma surrounding mental illness. In this paper, I present the case of the community mental health center in Carabayllo, the “flagship” facility of the ongoing reform, located in a poor semi-urban district at the outskirts of Lima, Peru. Drawing from three months of fieldwork and interviews with psychiatrists, community mental health workers and residents of Carabayllo, I argue that this transitional moment provides insight into the dynamics that arise in the community when total institutions start to fade away. I explore residents’ reflections on this transition, considering in particular the anxieties they express over the proximity of mental illness and the symbolic and spatial dimensions they reveal of the relationship between clinic and community. With the asylum reconfiguring and the community-based model spreading in the city through its different agents, I signal the diverse challenges the residents of Carabayllo articulate against the closeness of mental illness and the extension of the clinic.

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Philanthropy and Social Finance in China

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Possibilities and Challenges of Transgenders as Monitorial Citizens: The Case of India

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