United States

In line with this year’s theme of “truth and responsibility,” we need new tools for doing rigorous anthropological research while maintaining accountability to the communities where we work. As researchers, we face complex, 21st century issues of globalization, climate change, racial justice, economic insecurity, and public health. We are tasked today with training our students to solve these big problems while adjusting to synchronous and asynchronous online teaching. In this roundtable, panelists will reflect on the obstacles facing instructors teaching methods courses and their efforts to overcome those obstacles.

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

Challenges to Teaching Anthropological Research Methods

research/research methods

pedagogy

teaching

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.

panel

This roundtable intends to have an open and honest conversation about the limits and possibilities of anthropological methods/analyses as forms of interventions and social transformation. We are frequently called to work within already-existing harmful infrastructures to create better biometrics, better trials, better institutions, better science. What are the feminist practices around using our methods and analysis for redeeming metrics/tools in toxic systems, and/or placing nuanced force towards the abolition of such systems? Long ago Emily Martin (1998) noted that an understanding of science as reductionist is sustained by treating it at distance, not carefully attending to the rich cultural worlds in which it is practiced. Following the feminist method of tracing how scientific charts, images, and terminologies are used, it becomes obvious that science(s) are capacious: lively, performative, partial, and indeterminate (Blell et al. 2021; Glabau 2017; Davis 2019; Benjamin 2019; Noble 2018; Mulla 2014;Taussig et al., 2013). While problems of racism, settler colonialism, and white supremacy are structural, political transformation often happens through direct, targeted action (Imarisha 2013). How then can we undertake direct actions that are not predicated upon reductionism-- that respond to everyday complexities? Where does reductionism (biological, statistical, molecular) afford strategic political possibilities? Where might it pose a dangerous trap? How do we add truths of ambiguity and indeterminacy, while also cultivating effective possibilities for social transformation? In this roundtable, we will discuss how to build a feminist anthropology of science that is politically powerful while based on the capaciousness of science.

Capaciousness and Its Limits: tools, metrics, methods, and analyses for social transformation

In January 2019, the Guinean journalist and feminist activist, Moussa Yéro Bah, was found guilty in a defamation suit. The suit involved a clip of Ms Bah on her radio news program, Les Grandes Gueules (Big Mouths), in which she spoke about a sexual assault case in Guinea. While Ms Bah never named the alleged perpetrator, his identity was well known on the street and in social media. He promptly sued Ms Bah for defamation, and won. Journalists and activists were inflamed by this decision and rallied in Ms Bah’s support, both on- and off-line. Meanwhile, the alleged perpetrator was never brought to trial for rape, despite the existence of video evidence against him, and the charges were quietly dropped. The tangled web of legal actions in this story raises critical questions about truth claims, the production of proof, and parallel systems of justice in sexual assault cases. While formal criminal justice processes require compiling evidence and investigating claims, the outcome of cases is often greatly shaped by gossip, digital and media activism, and the weight of public opinion. What happens to audio-visual evidence when it spills out of courtrooms and into public life, and vice versa? How should journalists and activists balance free expression with respect for the rule of law? What ultimately constitutes justice, for survivors of sexual violence and their advocates? This roundtable brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners across law, anthropology, media studies, and film to explore questions of truth, justice, shame, and activism in the context of sexual assault cases. The organizers will share work-in-progress from a film they are making about the Guinean case. The film traces a genealogy of false claims and debates that shaped the overall case. Through experimentation with formal qualities of film as an audio-visual medium, the project creatively explores voice, sound, listening, and seeing in response to sexual violence. Participants will share their expertise and explore topics including the rise of feminist digilantism in sexual violence cases; the everyday proliferation of audio-visual technology and its impact on legal cases; and the notion of shame as a productive force. We will also consider more broadly the question of how to use anthropology and film-making as means of advocacy. While film is increasingly used as a form of evidence in legal proceedings, what is its nature and possible impact as a form of intervention outside of the courtroom?

Big Mouth: Film, Advocacy & Truth Claims in a Guinean Trial

Central America represents a key site for examining the convergence of many different shifting migration dynamics - from the migration of African, Asian, and Caribbean migrants through the region en route to North America, to dramatic increases in asylum applications and forced migration from Venezuela, Colombia, and elsewhere. This roundtable brings together anthropologists working on and with asylum seekers seeking refuge within Central America; migrants in transit from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean moving through Central America; and Central Americans on the move through Mexico to draw connections among issues of racialization, (in)visibility, and (in)mobility within these different migration flows and dynamics. In particular, the roundtable addresses how these issues intersect with local contexts of marginalization and (informal/ephemeral) infrastructures of reception. Their visibility/invisibility and mobility/immobility are often strategically linked and become employed during encounters with state, non-state, and other local actors, for example, through migrant caravans and in migrant-catering hostels or shelters. This is not new, however, this roundtable seeks to advance our understanding of contemporary processes of racialization in this Central American context, which has perhaps never before seen such a particular mix of people on the move. What does this mean for local and travelling imaginaries of Central America and Central Americans on the global stage? How do racialized understandings of travellers and dwellers alike shape social and practical dynamics of reception? To what extent do understandings of race, ethnicity, nationality and religious affiliation get re-shaped in the current migratory landscape? Addressing these questions means challenging ‘truths’ about migration, such as the neat separation of different categories and stages of migration, but also, and in particular, the uncomfortable ‘truths’ about racialization and other power dynamics that mark migration landscapes, including our representations of these.

At a crossroads: old and new racializations in the Central American migratory landscape

The COVID-19 pandemic (caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus) exposed the pervasive social inequities and the detrimental impact on poor health outcomes among low-income communities of color across the U.S. African American/Black, Latinx, and Native American populations, in particular, are disproportionately at greater risk for COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death. Amongst low-income communities of color in Inland Southern California, COVID-19 exists alongside diabetes, respiratory conditions, and heart disease. Structural factors, such as poverty, racism, and housing exacerbate the rate of disease clustering, contributing to what Singer termed “syndemics.” It is the intersection of biology and disease with social contexts which has been the case among the communities at the center of this research. In an effort to address health disparities in Inland Southern California, the STOP COVID-19 CA (Share, Trust, Organize, Partner: The COVID-19 California Alliance) team at the University of California, Riverside focused on COVID-19 awareness and education research among Black/African American, Latinx, and Native American communities. This project incorporated a multidisciplinary and community-based participatory approach in order to critically involve structurally vulnerable populations in COVID-19 testing and vaccination perceptions and efforts. The objective of this roundtable is to bring together the varying voices involved in this project and discuss the role of research institutions, centering the responsibility of the university, as ethically obliged to serve these communities in addressing the health needs of the populations with whom they reside. The panelists will describe the factors that impact COVID-19 testing and vaccination among communities of color and shed light on how the university, as an intrinsic component of the storage and generation of knowledge, can serve structurally vulnerable communities in moral and justice-oriented ways that ultimately work towards reducing social inequalities. Although the lasting impacts of COVID-19 have yet to be ascertained, there is an opportunity for medical anthropologists, public health practitioners, and community members to engage in cross-sector and equitable collaborations. Furthermore, this will center social determinants of health and provide recommendations on how to better respond to compounding health and resource disparities for future outbreaks. In the midst of uncertainty, there lies the opportunity to establish community-based, meaningful, just, and moral responses to public health emergencies.

Addressing health disparities among Black, Latinx, and Native American communities through multidisciplinary and cross-sector collaborations in Riverside, California

The proposed roundtable brings together some of the scholars who have contributed chapters in a recently published edited volume titled “Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective” (Routledge Press, December 2020) edited by Professor Ahonaa Roy. This scholarship represents innovative multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of historically contingent, non-heteronormative, and transgressive gender and sexual diversity in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. The scholarship employs varied theoretical and empirical lenses including decolonization, provincialization and neoliberalism. Significantly, the roundtable includes scholars based in South Asia and elsewhere in the global South in addition to scholars from the United States. As such, the roundtable provides a unique opportunity for conversations that transcend the confines of the academy in the West. The panelists attempt to “decolonize” the study of gender and sexuality as well as ethnographic methodologies, and their work traverses topics such as: the relationship between sexual sovereignty and economic opportunities, notably microcredit business enterprises for women and sexual minorities in Bangladesh (Ahonaa Roy); Sri Lankan men and queer desires, fantasies and sexual experiences that are rendered invisible in western epistemologies of queer sexuality (Themal Ellawala); critical interrogations of the category of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) at the intersections of international, regional and local reconfigurations of gender and sexual politics in the global South (Jose Fernando Serrano-Amaya); and invocations of upper-caste Hindutva politics and self-representations of hijra (indigenous transvestites) in northern India (Arpita Phukan Biswas). The roundtable provides a unique platform for a critical dialogue on gender and sexuality that emphasizes colonial and post-colonial histories, and sexual epistemologies and experiences in the global South and particularly in South Asia. The roundtable engages with analyses of the myriad historical, material and political contexts that shape gendered selfhoods in South Asia and beyond. Finally, the roundtable seeks to illuminate the variously gendering and political imagery, and negotiations of indeterminacy arguing for a decolonization of gender and sexuality, and spurring further debate around postcoloniality, cultural and political representations, citizenship, and gendered empowerment.

A Roundtable Discussion on an Edited Volume "Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization: South Asia in the World Perspective" (Routledge Press, 2020)

Liberal democracy is under threat in both the Global South and North from countries as different as the Philippines, Turkey and Brazil to India, Hungary and the United States. If Vladimir Putin is to be believed, then “The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the overwhelming majority of the population” (Financial Times 27 June 2019). Rather than test this statement against local, ethnographic examples, this roundtable asks what conditions make such a statement seem reasonable, even if debatable, and what allows its political sentiment to gain momentum around the world? This challenge to liberal democracy appears concurrently with many developments that resemble classic elements of Twentieth century totalitarianism, including growing 1) reliance upon simplified narratives of history (along with increased dismissal of facts to the contrary); 2) hostility to migrants, refugees, racialized minorities, women, and people with alternative gender/sexual orientations (along with an increase in masculine nationalism); 3) contempt for parliamentary procedures and independent judiciaries (along with an increased acceptance of unconstrained executive authority); 4) contempt for political plurality (along with an increase in narrowly defined ideas of patriotism, religious piety, and social conduct); 5) contempt for respectful, civil discourse on the grounds that it precludes speaking truth to power (along with an increase in humiliating political rivals and those defined as “other”); 6) sentiments of “anti-elitism” (along with the rhetorical argument that “real people” are uneducated, rural, and traditional). We can add from the Twenty-first century the role of social media in creating antagonistic political communities. These trends pose challenges for the discipline because they demand explanations for similarities in diverse parts of the world whereas anthropology often prefers to emphasize differences. To paraphrase George Monbiot, what makes possible a shared culture of executive impunity in otherwise culturally different places? What allows a similar political sentiment to appear in countries with such different histories, positions in the global economy, and experiences with colonial and post-colonial power? One possible factor, though not a sole cause, is the global exportation of the European state form through colonization without which totalitarianism as a modern phenomenon would never have appeared, first in Europe then elsewhere. Yet paradoxically, totalitarian struggles both rely on the state to leverage power and disparage it as a corrupt, elitist, and bureaucratic edifice that impedes the people’s movement (however the people might be defined). Along with the state, then, perhaps the revolutionary European idea of the sovereign “people,” understood abstractly, who must face no constraints lest their freedom be diminished, plays a powerful rhetoric role. This roundtable will have each participant delivering a set piece on the roundtable theme followed by an approximately thirty minute discussion with the audience.

A culture of executive impunity: Examining the conditions of global totalitarian trends

Panelist will discuss an intervention and collaborative framework known as Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), which privileges students' voices while creating opportunities to study their social contexts to improve conditions and engender greater equity. Panelist will share how collaborations across generations (faculty and graduate, undergraduate and high school students) provide a unique learning experience that produces knowledge strengthening social identities, community engagement, and the role of social justice in education. YPAR establishes collaborations across generations in which faculty and students at all levels and from different departments work collectively to produce knowledge that challenges systems of oppression (racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia). This knowledge is crucial for student success, in particular the success of marginalized students. The proposed sessions perceives student success for marginalized students as the promotion of student voice, positive and healthy social identities and participation in transforming oppressive conditions in under-resourced and underprivileged communities. Student success, in this way, is not solely focused on academic achievements but also includes the gaining of knowledge that inspires students to become change agents for social justice.YPAR in particular offers great potential as an inquiry process for investigating and improving educational policies and practices. Cammarota (2011) reports how student researchers used their findings to improve the representation and perspective of Mexican American culture. In addition, these same student researchers applied the knowledge gained from their inquiries to increase diversity in Advanced Placement courses and expand bi-lingual education. Cammarota (2008) also identifies how youth ethnographers created a video documentary, which highlighted a lack of funding and support for school infrastructure repairs and updates (bathrooms, tile, ceilings, library resources, and technology). These youth presented their video to the school board and within weeks their school received funds to complete some of these repair and updates. The proposed panel will illuminate the impact that student voice can have on school policy and practices, particularly as it relates to the educational experiences of students of color, as well as its impact on the students themselves, as evidenced in their engagement and success in school. Despite the precarious position of students of color in our educational system, rarely do we draw from the voices, knowledge and experiences of these students to address the issues that affect them. These young people are the most important stakeholders in their education, inasmuch as their everyday school experiences provide a wealth of knowledge, ranging from the obvious to the subtlest. By initiating a process though which student voices are elevated, the panelist discuss how students who are experiencing disengagement from school learn to express their ideas and thoughts around educational and social problems. By taking on the role of student researchers, they have the opportunity to contribute knowledge to decision-making around policies and practices that can enhance diversity and inclusiveness in education.

Youth Participatory Action Research: Collaboration across Generations for Social Justice Education

Given the highly problematic dynamics between the Islamic Republic of Iran and western countries (especially the US), fieldwork in the Islamic Republic of Iran is barrier-ridden. IRI officials and culture disapprove of anthropology. Some anthropologists and other scholars with Iranian background have been imprisoned in Iran under false charges. Many topics chosen by our panelists are politically and culturally sensitive, and potential interlocutors are reluctant to discuss them with researchers. Outsiders, those without an Iranian passport, especially those from the West and all the more so, from the US, face severe difficulties in obtaining an Iranian visa. Under these conditions, how do intrepid, stubborn anthropologists who still want to conduct research about romance, marriage, co-habitation and sexuality in Iran manage? Organizers Drs. Afary and Hegland aim to provide a palate of research strategies developed by scholars working on Iran for researchers, students, and applied anthropologists interested in Iran and helpful for those working in other areas and about other topics. In addition to the presenters, at least three other anthropologists lacking Iranian background have managed to conduct field work in the IRI; Agnes Loeffler (Allopathy Goes Native Traditional Versus Modern Medicine in Iran, 2007), Zuzanna Olszewska (The Pearl of Dari: Poetry and Personhood among Young Afghans in Iran, 2015) and Rose Wellman (Feeding Iran: Shi`i Families and the Making of the Islamic Republic, 2021) Outstanding books have been published by scholars with Iranian background. For students hoping to conduct research about Iran, quite a number of scholars are available to provide suggestions. Our participants implemented a variety of strategies to study sensitive topics in the politically-fraught environment of the IRI, such as Janet's large facebook project to investigate attitude and practices among Iranians and people in other Middle East/ North Africa countries. Living in Iran, Masserat could use the snowball method to conduct in-depth interviews and focus groups to analyze how different generations of women overcame challenges and gain independent lives. Behrooz's Bakhtiari background helped him analyze changing marriage practices among that ethnic/tribal group, such as marriages between higher and lower status tribal groups. GholamReza and Maryam utilized surveys and found ways to interview profession and carpet weaving women about the illegal practice of co-habitation ("white marriage"). Vahideh studied social media to investigate how people negotiate intimacy in the electronic age. Amir studied textbooks to analyze what the regime promotes as ideal family relations and attitudes about diversity. Hegland focused on telephone, zoom, and whatsapp communication with long-time Aliabad friends to study results of past early/child marriages. Erika Friedl collected folk stories, proverbs, folk, philosophy, and religion and explained their meanings to locals through ethnographic context. She developed "ethnographic stories" to reveal how women wielded their culture to attain some aims, in spite of severe limitations. Through a variety of tactics, Erika studied the leaning processes of children to understand and wield their cultures. For researchers without Iranian background, long-term research, so people know and trust one, or utilizing contacts to gain entrance to a community is advisable.

Strategies to Cope with Fieldwork Barriers and Sensitive, Politically-Fraught Topics in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Romance, Marriage, Co-habitation, Sexuality

What does it mean to ‘steal’ public education? Or to ‘steal’ food when you are hungry? How do everyday people, in working to secure the basic necessities of life amidst the profound insecurity that racial capitalism requires, subvert the legal, political, economic, spatial, and ideological structures that uphold private property? How do these subversions help us understand and locate contemporary mechanisms and logics of enclosure as they operate in the Global North? This roundtable explores these questions by examining contemporary instances in which people lay claim to things like housing, education, and food outside of legal or approved channels,---the significance of those claims, and the political subjectivities that are constructed along the way. Through case studies that focus on food, housing, education, and transportation, we ask, how do these claims make visible, interrupt, contest, and/or de-stabilize enclosure and what political futures do they illuminate? As scholars of race, colonialism, gender, and labor have long established, these interruptions, refusals, and contestations-- through marronage, encampment, strike, and mutual aid--forge formations of kinship and social relations outside of the structures of property and the nuclear family. Building upon this work, this roundtable queries how these alternative formations are likewise policed, why, and the relationship of policing of these interruptions to enclosure to the continued production of hierarchical group differentiation articulated through race.

Stealing Survival / Interrupting Enclosure

In his 1995 essay Subtitling Ethnographic Films, David MacDougall concludes that “[ethnographic] films that so easily convey what other people say would do well to remind us that there are also more obdurate, private, and unknowable dimensions of their lives”. As anthropologists working with bits of film, or as filmmakers working with a bit of anthropology, we take MacDougall’s closing statement as an opening. We wonder: How do we create a “shadowing of meanings” (ibid) when we inscribe subtitles, or when we refuse to subtitle ethnographic films? We bring together conversations about participatory documentary film with the following: displaced and refugee youth in Iran, deaf filmmakers working in Swedish public broadcast, Cambodian Muslim home movies chatting off silent histories, the multiple translations and reinterpretations provoked in the films of Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook as her Thai interlocutors engage with “masterpieces” of Western painting, and past cinematic ethnographic *canon* such as “To Live with Herds” and “The Axe Fight”. We scratch eyeballs, earbuds, and skulls as questions come crashing: how can hearing audiences experience sign language through the image and beyond translation? Can we find in good-ol’ ethnographic films and their subtitles the subversive markings of unreliable narrators so to enact a surprising reveal and yet not totally undermine the entire filmic engagement? How many forms and routes can coloniality take when we work with partners in crime in and away from fields that require various forms of claims and inscriptions, echoes, and erasures? What happens when the ethnographer-editor turns away from the film for an instant and unbeknownst a subtitle lurks in to re-write the whole film? Disclaimer: no answers.  Hope: an acknowledgment of the problematics of playing with words and signs in a world that exceeds language.  What we want: merely to start a discussion that we believe is often lacking in documentary making and viewing. We open this roundtable to an audience who may also have one too many words to say/write over images that beg them not to (or trick them into swirling back-and-forths).

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Challenges to Teaching Anthropological Research Methods

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