The Society for Anthropological Sciences proposed a session to discuss Science in Anthropology in the wake of what became known as #aaafail: the omission of the word "science" from the Long Range Plan. There will be a roundtable of various folks, various perspectives, including members of the Executive Board. Awesome! Well, sort of. The session is scheduled for the morning of Thursday, November 17. Which happens to conflict with not one but two sessions of the Biological Anthropology Section, three sessions of the Archaeological Division, and one session of the Evolutionary Anthropology Society. These are some of the most affected and vocal stakeholders in the discussion, but those voices won't be able to participate in this discussion. Indeed, one of the speakers is Dr. Alice Dreger, who wrote what could be considered the opening salvo in the #aaafail reporting. It was entertaining and clever, and it was also one of the most polarizing perspectives. Importantly, Dr. Dreger isn't an anthropologist. She's a historian/philosopher of science. That's great and interesting and relevent to an extent, but why go outside the discipline to have a discussion about science IN anthropology? Where are the anthro bloggers who contributed so much passion to the issue? Well, I would be there but I'm presenting a paper in one of the BAS sessions so I'm out.
In the wake of all that's happened in the last year (#aaafail, Florida governor Rick Scott), and the EB's embracing of the Science discussion (President Dominguez is a discussant) it is disappointing that there was no outreach to all of the scientifically-rooted AAA sections to consider how this would affect opposing sessions. There is concern that the discussion will draw away the audience for the BAS sessions, which are already competing directly against each other.
To be clear, this is not an oversight by the Biological Anthropology Section. Since the session did not originate with BAS it had no jurisdiction over scheduling nor did it even know about the session until the schedule was made. I really do understand that scheduling a meeting of this scale is a gargantuan task and some double-bookings are unavoidable. We just need to get each other's back a little more. In recent weeks, the AAA has done an admirable job of claiming science and scientists as part of anthropology. I want us to grow that inclusivity! That's something I hope to explore at this meeting as a 2011 AAA Leadership Fellow. I'll be meeting with members of the EB to learn about AAA governance and I'll be asking questions about what we can do to navigate and ultimately break down these disciplinary partitions.
But I'm not just kvetching, as fun as that is. I want us all to be able to at least hear the discussion even if we can't be there. To that end, I requested that AAA record the discussion to produce as a podcast but there is no recording equipment available at that time. So, BANDITs, are you going to be in Montreal? Do you have some kind of recording device? Are you willing to attend and record the session and send the files to AAA so they can produce a podcast? Please let me know tout de suite, d'accord?
This was pointed out a couple months ago on G+ by a single person, and it got little feedback. I was wondering when this scheduling conflict might get more attention. Even though I am not presenting at that time, I was still torn on where to go, but it's pretty much settled. I will be there, and I do intend to rent a digital camera from my school anyway, so I'll see what I can do about recording this event.
ReplyDeleteThank you for pointing this out. This is really unfortunate. On the one hand, it seems like typical AAA--lots of cross-scheduling and room mismatch. I wouldn't want to get too down on them because running 6000-person meetings must be crazy. On the other hand, it would not seem too difficult to check a AAA-sponsored session against other section events. Thank you again for taking the initiative on this and hopefully can lead to further discussions.
ReplyDeleteDick and Jason, thanks for your comments. I am somewhat dismayed by this. Agree plus a thousand that scheduling something like this must be a nightmare and that some conflicts are thus unavoidable but I'm disappointed that more thought didn't go into this in all respects. Please know that the leadership of the AAA Biological Anthropology Section is concerned as well. We may not be able to record the session for sharing purposes due to sound quality and speaker permission issues, but I am looking into having attendees blog about it here and in other venues. I am also hoping for some live tweeting. I wish I could attend but will be presenting in one of the BAS sessions. Please consider attending the BAS business meeting on Friday at 6:15pm where we will discuss this and other issues of interest to bio folks. All are welcome!
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me like the one time you might want to make a special effort to not have a scheduling conflict is regarding, oh, say, a giant kerfuffle in your own discipline. I am sure it's a giant task, but the bio anthro folks have been complaining for years that their sessions are always scheduled at the same time. And then to schedule a panel on science in anthropology at the same time? It is ridiculous. I am challenging myself to not see it as intentional, but it is hard.
ReplyDeleteI'm in one of the conflicting sections as well, and was deeply upset when I checked the schedule and noticed the conflict (in fact, I'm the one that Dick mentioned above as having initially posted about it to my G+ account). I absolutely think that scientifically-minded anthropologists should be at the Science in Anthropology discussion in numbers. I just hope that something can be worked out with speaker permissions so that we'll at least be able to see the discussion after the fact. Thank you for your efforts towards this.
ReplyDeleteI have contacted Carla Fernandez (the AAA coordinator) to see what kind of hoops I need to jump through if I want to film, but I haven't heard back. (Short notice, I know.) Either way, I will be there with Twitter, G+, and Blogger at my fingertips. Is this the part where we conspire to use a more specific hashtag? :)
ReplyDeleteWe've started using #aaasci. The BAS is already in touch with some folks at AAA but I don't think it hurts to have multiple voices. I was initially told that if someone wanted to record and if permissions could be secured, we could go ahead. Then we were told that it was too late to secure the permissions for a recording to disseminate publicly. We're still looking into it. But recordings for personal use that can be used for transcription and commentary (blogs, twitter, letters to AAA, etc.) are fine. I hope people attend the session, but it is frustrating that the flipside of that is that fewer people will attend 2 BAS sessions. That's a quarter of all BAS sessions for the entire meetings. And yes, your math skills are correct if you figured out that means there's a whopping total of EIGHT explicitly bio sessions in a meeting that usually has 500+ sessions. Let's keep each other posted!
ReplyDeleteWe do not have permission from the speakers yet. I'm not sure we will be able to obtain them, as I am not authorized to do this myself. Therefore, people are free to record the session for their own personal use and I will offer space in this blog for people to post their summaries and interpretations of the discussion. We hope we can also get some space on the AAA blog.
ReplyDeleteWe got the permissions and a very crisp recording. Once we all get back from the meeting and catch our breath, we'll get it posted!
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