SfAA/SoE Session Proposals
If you are interested in participating in one of the SfAA sessions proposed below, please email the session organizers with your paper title and short abstract. Note that you will be required to submit your abstract via the SfAA submission form after you register. The abstract submission deadline is October 15, 2021.
SfAA Registration: https://www.appliedanthro.org/annual-meeting/annual-meeting-registration
SfAA Abstract Submission: https://www.appliedanthro.org/annual-meeting/abstract-information
SfAA Registration: https://www.appliedanthro.org/annual-meeting/annual-meeting-registration
SfAA Abstract Submission: https://www.appliedanthro.org/annual-meeting/abstract-information
Revolutions and Transformative Possibilities in Global Health and Global Change Studies
Session Organizers: Elizabeth A. Olson , Cynthia T. Fowler
Session Abstract: In this session, panelists present primary ethnographic research on the ways in which global ecosystem and climatic changes are presenting novel opportunities for improving global health (both of environments and of human beings). The contributions in this session highlight constraints and affordances to multispecies wellbeing that we have become newly or increasingly aware of due to the acuteness of the current crises, and we embed our analyses within a deep historical context. With lenses tinted by recent events, presenters use social science research to push beyond rote and etic explanations of the relationships between environmental change and global health. Panelists approach the ethnographic examples with a sense of incredible urgency to mitigate health inequities and environmental injustices. In light of the recent and ongoing pandemics, anthropologists and ethnobiologists have critical roles to play in performing research, disseminating results, and translating scientific discourse for public audiences. We are also obliged to advocate for the consideration of biocultural diversity in policy development and for the application of scientific knowledge in decision making. Who should anthropologists prioritize in our inquiries, how, and why?
The research presented in this session provides examples of advocating for the wellbeing of humans and nonhumans as well as for healthy environments by targeting a variety of biopolitical issues. We address important convergences between the dynamic, complex, emerging contexts for living on Earth and the ways people sense, perceive, experience, and know their own and others’ bodies. We link ethnographic records of local, lived, experiences related to wellbeing to broader social and ecological processes. In what ways have contemporary crises demonstrated the continuing significance of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, geography, and other dimensions of power and status, vulnerability and marginalization, stratification and inequality? Why do health care and environmental justice continue to operate along these lines?