While the anthropology of citizenship has investigated multiple modes of political belonging • from Locke’s rights-based citizenship to ‘imagined community’ and the refugee as ‘Other’ • it has under-theorized the role of giving. Citizenship has always been a territorial mode of belonging, but anthropologists since Marcel Mauss also remind us how transactions inscribe political community. This panel seeks to theorize the relations of (non) citizens to each other and the state through examination of the role of welfare, giving, and humanitarian aid. In calling for a conversation between the anthropologies of citizenship and of giving, we aim to investigate the responsibility claims of those who authoritatively govern. If citizenship and giving are both mainly articulated through a language of “responsibility,” what would be the role of anthropology in understanding this language? First, how does contestation over the question of who is a "citizen" or group member determine who gets aid • for minorities or especially for refugees and other migrants? How do transactions of welfare and entitlements (and the status thereby encoded) resolve questions over citizenship itself? How do "misgivings over giving" • and other anxieties over who deserves aid • exclude others? Christopher Taylor’s paper examines one such contestation among Muslims in India, as they face questioning of their very citizenship status, while Mari Norbakk investigates how expatriate "Qatar-born" Egyptians navigate conflicting notions of non-national belonging in private transactions and in civic spaces of education and commerce. Second, a growing number of anthropologists now focus on humanitarianism as a new form of governance. How do/can we (re)imagine citizenship when aid organizations extend the power of the state? When does the “governance” of humanitarian actors re-interpret extant state-oriented citizenships? Salwa Tareen illustrates how Karachi residents utilize charity networks, as opposed to state institutions, to respond to “everyday disaster." Yasemin Ipek’s paper on Syrian-led humanitarian efforts in Turkey complicates current critiques of humanitarian governance as many people find themselves re-working imagined community when identities of refugees and humanitarians merge. Third, voluntary organizations can also provide “alternative models of citizenship,” given how they foster governance autonomously from (even, in opposition) to the state. How do such non-state spaces add layered complexity to citizenships, echoing anthropologists’ work in legal pluralism? All our papers challenge the assumption that state law • or even the cultural determinants of “imagined community” • are sufficient for citizenship. While we ethnographically illustrate the deep complexity of civic identity and governance, we also recall anthropology’s old insight that the gift can offer an insightful and clarifying trope to understand these manifold layers of political belonging. Finally, we question our field’s (and our) assumptions about what social scientists define as "citizenship." Our ethnographic material adds to the critiques of essentialist notions of citizenship that are rooted in territorial, racial, or other modes of fictive political kinship. Finally, we hold ourselves responsible for how we can productively converse with powerful humanitarian and other powerful governmental actors while we maintain our commitment to speaking truth to power.

Syrians Caring for Syrians: Transnational Muslim Humanitarian Networks

Giving and the Misgivings of Citizenship: Humanitarianism and New Modes of Citizenship

technical paper

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.

AAA Annual Meeting 2021

“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.

Yasemin Ipek

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