AAA Communities Coming Soon!

David Beriss

This is going to be a very quick note about two related things.

First, many SAFN members (and many members of the American Anthropological Association) have long been frustrated by the limitations of the listserv email system AAA sections use to communicate with members. I won’t go into the long list of problems (but one reason I am writing this here is because many of our members do not get the listerv emails). Rather, I want to point out that the AAA is rolling out a shiny new and very promising communications system that will combine email with a kind of social media platform. If it works well, it should solve a lot of our problems with the out-of-date listserv. If you are a current AAA member, you should look for email from the AAA in the next day or two outlining how the new Communities will work, how to log in, etc. The plan is to roll it out by March 1, which should give us the opportunity to use the new system to get organized for the 2019 AAA meetings.

Second, I was just looking at the AAA website and thinking about this new platform when I noticed that no less than two SAFN members have articles prominently featured on the Anthropology News front page. One is by Kerri Lesh, who writes about the anthropomorphizing of wine, starting with the Basque wines she studies, but raising interesting questions about the ways we talk about wine and place, about the dominance of French grape varieties in legitimizing wine tastes, about the problematic terms “New World” and “Old World,” and about Kansas mulberry wine.  The other is by Ashanté Reese, on what we bring to anthropology when we come from somewhere else (in disciplinary, political, ethnic, or other terms). It is not about food, but it is a good read, especially if you came to anthropology from another field (I came in from French Studies) looking for methods or theoretical frameworks, but not necessarily thinking about making anthropology the center of who you are as a scholar.

Go read the articles. Let us know about what you publish so we can write about it here and point readers in your direction. Be sure to especially let us know about things you write that are available to the public and not behind pay walls, because that is a great way to get people to read what you write. And if you are a AAA member, keep your eye on your email for announcements about the new communities in the next few days.