Setha Low
AAA President

The summer has been eventful and busy, starting off with the spring Executive Board meeting in Arlington, Virginia. I reported to you about that meeting in a blast email in early June, and a pdf of my message is available on my website (www.aaanet.org/president). A list of motions is also included in the Association Business section of this AN. Following the spring meeting we have continued moving forward as we work on many fronts to support anthropologists. At this moment, however, I’d like to step back a couple of months and share with you a report on my meeting in Chile, which occurred as the May AN was going to press.

Strengthening ties among all anthropologists continues to be a high priority for me. In my efforts to boost our relationship with our counterparts in South America, in April I had the opportunity to meet with anthropologists in Santiago, Chile. I was very fortunate to spend an afternoon with Debbie Guerra, the president of the Colegio de Antropólogos, a professional organization that represents various subfields of anthropology.

The Colegio is not an association as we think of it in the US, but rather a legal professional institution that handles all aspects of anthropological practice as well as academic issues. It protects the rights of anthropologists to work, represents the discipline in terms of advocacy, and shares information about opportunities including jobs and grants through the website www.colegioantropologos.cl. The Colegio has 350 members and holds a Congress every three years that attracts more than 400 attendees. The registration for this meeting covers the production cost of the proceedings, a significant publication, especially for applied anthropological work. Member dues are modest, so everyone can join, but there are not enough funds to produce a journal.

One of the challenges facing the Colegio is rooted in politics. Before Pinochet, it was mandatory for anthropologists to be members, much like being registered, and the Colegio’s roles involved political representation and advocacy, giving anthropologists a voice on issues such as indigenous rights and environmental justice. After Pinochet passed a law that gave individuals the ability to choose whatever professional group they wanted, new groups formed and others fragmented. Since the two issues mentioned above—indigenous rights and environmental justice—are the focus of most anthropologists who do research in Chile and are issues of political action, there is concern that the Colegio’s ability to influence the government on these issues has been reduced.

President Guerra informed me that she would be most interested in creating a way to distribute applied anthropological work produced in Chile. Most young anthropologists in Chile work in government or government-related jobs and find it difficult to learn about other applied techniques and theory even within their own country. She is most concerned about providing assistance for applied anthropologists seeking to publish and access current research, since there are more opportunities for those in the universities, both public and private, to publish.

She was quite positive about the projects that our Commission on World Anthropologies (CWA) is undertaking to foster the international exchange of scholarship, including promoting international meetings and evaluating multilingual publication options. The Colegio de Antropólogos would welcome a CWA member to attend their Congress in October 2010 in San Pedro Atacama. They also plan to apply for funds to bring representatives to the 2010 AAA Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

The second person I met with in Chile was with Milka Castro, the vice president of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Antropología (ALA). Her point of view was a bit different as she has held numerous leadership roles including president of both associations. She is also in contact with the World Council of Anthropological Associations as well as other international groups. She emphasized the importance of creating more linkages to connect the diverse faculties within Chile: the country is 3,000 miles long and communication among faculties is an issue. One way ALA has addressed this issue is by inviting all the anthropology departments and university research institutes to nominate a representative to the Comité Académico of the II Congreso Latinoamericano de Antropología. Another issue for all faculties is the existence of very little funding for research. ALA would certainly appreciate more joint and multinational projects developed through collaboration with the AAA and its members.

The most gratifying aspect of these meetings was the optimism everyone expressed about the future of world anthropologies. Although I do not know what the long-term impact of these meetings will be, in the short-term they have helped us to understand the challenges that other anthropological associations face and the concerns that they have. With this knowledge we can be better partners and collaborators in working toward a more global vision of our historically, politically and culturally diverse discipline.

*This article was published in the September 2009 Anthropology News.