Shirley was recently nominated to run as one of the candidates for President of the American Anthropological Association. The lections take place in late Spring of this year. Fiske, recently a member of CoPAPIA, writes the following, “I am pleased that NAPA supported me to put my hat in the ring for President-elect and I really appreciate all the positive feedback and supportive greetings and emails that people have been sending. NAPA has been an incubator for leadership since its inception and continues to put forward leaders in a number of critical places who collectively have helped deepen the understanding of practitioners and applied anthropologists. I am glad to be a part of this process.”
“Anthropology as a profession and discipline faces many challenges as the economy contracts, employment opportunities become scarcer, and the world globalizes and shrinks under the weight of cell phones and social media. More than ever we need to be able to articulate why anthropology is important and valuable—whether as educators, advocates, public citizens, or decision-makers. In two stellar plenary sessions at the last AAA, Jeremy Sabloff and Gillian Tett both urged engagement, from outreach to public policy. Sabloff argues that anthropology de-incentivizes anthropological outreach at the same time we need to nurture our own public intellectuals as spokespersons for a disciplinary perspective. Gillian Tett admonishes us to think how academic anthropology can be applied more broadly to the wider universe of activity, as she did with financial service institutions and credit markets prior to their crash. If you weren’t able to be at the sessions, you can see them and check it out at the AAA site: http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/2010-Annual-Meeting-Coverage.cfm.”
“I believe we have this momentum towards greater engagement now. An increasing number of anthropologists are extending their analyses into public issues and civil discourse, whether disasters like the Gulf oil spill, climate change, critical analyses of the underbelly of the forces of globalization, or advocacy for people who have been wronged materially or culturally. Growing numbers of anthropologists are working full-time in applied work in non-profit organizations, foundations, consulting organizations and government, at all levels; and the pendulum toward applied work in academia has swung far to the left. I would like, if elected, to encourage this direction and momentum as President of the American Anthropological Association.”
