2009 Podcast Award Competition

The Association for Political and Legal Anthropology welcomes submissions of original podcasts for our inaugural Podcast Award. Podcasts will be judged on the basis of relevance, creativity, and production quality. We especially encourage podcasts that speak to topics raised in recent and forthcoming issues of PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review (see below).  For example, hold a reading group and record the discussion, record a public talk and a conversation in response to it to it, or read from a classic text that inspired a PoLAR author or is relevant to a particular PoLAR article.  We encourage faculty members to have students submit course-related podcasts, and look forward to submissions from faculty members and students alike.  Winners will receive free APLA dues (and PoLAR) for one year and the winning podcast will be made available on the APLA website.

The deadline for submissions for our inaugural Podcast Award is October 30, 2009
Please click here for more detailed information.

2009 Student Paper Prize Competition

The APLA Board invites individuals who are students in a degree-granting program (including M.A., Ph.D. and J.D.) at the time of their submission to send stand-alone papers between 5000 and 7500 words centering on the analysis of political and legal institutions and processes. Topics may include the State; citizenship; civil society; colonialism and post-colonial public spheres; nationalism; cultural politics; multiculturalism; cosmopolitanism; globalization; immigration and refugees; resistance; and communicative media. We encourage submissions that expand the purview of political and legal anthropology and challenge us to think anthropologically in new ways about power, politics and law.

APLA awards a cash prize of $350.00, plus travel expenses of up to $650.00 if the prize winner attends the 2009 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association to receive the prize in person. The prize winner will be announced in the Anthropology News, and the winning paper will be published in the peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review. Submissions should be sent to:

Or, preferably sent as email attachments to kimberley_coles@redlands.edu. For digital submissions, please use PDF format. Deadline: 1 October 2009.

• 2008: Karine Vanthuyne "Becoming Maya? The politics and pragmatics of 'being indigenous' in post-genocide Guatemala"



• 2007: Mark Schuller, Gluing Globalization: NGOs as Intermediaries in Haiti



• 2006: Tomi Castle, Sexual Citizenship: Articulating Citizenship, Identity, and the Pursuit of the Good Life in Urban Brazil
  Amy L Porter, Fleeting Dreams and Flowing Goods: Citizenship and Consumption in Havana Cuba



• 2005: Jessica Greenberg, Noc Reklamozdera: Democracy, Consumption, and the Contradictions of Representation in Post-Socialist Serbia



• 2004: Greg Beckett, Master of the Wood: Moral Authority and Political Imaginaries in Haiti



• 2003: Christopher Colvin, Constructing the Past, Imagining the Future: Pursuing the Political Through Traumatic Storytelling



• 2002: John Tofik Karam, Intensified Eth(n)ics: Arab Brazilians and Political Representation in Neoliberal Brazil



• 2001: Kimberley Coles, Ambivalent Builders: Europeanization, the Production of Difference, and Internationals in Bosnia-Herzegovina



• 1999: Ayse Parla, The 'Honor' of the State: Virginity Examinations in Turkey



• 1998: Nitasha Sharma, Down By Law: Responses and Effects of Sampling Restrictions on Rap



• 1997: Conerly Casey, Suffering and the Identification of Enemies in Northern Nigeria



• 1996: Harry G. West, Creative Destruction and Sorcery of Construction: Power, Hope and Suspicion in Post-War Mozambique