I invoke the song title of Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 classic (yes, it dates me) because the phrase intimates an assertion, something about uncertainty, the promise of a perspective and the question of value. As I reflect on AAA’s year of activities and accomplishments, “For What It’s Worth” captures this time of intense global and local injustice and civil unrest, the place of the Association in it, and whether our efforts are worthwhile—or not. This is not about any one issue. It’s about nearly everything important the Association tries to do, the decisions it makes, and the actions it takes amidst competing shouts and murmurs, sometimes without guarantee of return on the effort.
In all, 2016 was an enormously productive and exhilarating, if challenging, year. I had the honor to work with a dedicated professional staff under Ed Liebow’s capable management and with the many anthropologists who volunteer their time and energy to the Association.
I wish AAA members could be flies on the wall to see staff and volunteers doing their best, day in and day out, to come to wise decisions after thorough study and deliberation and to enact these decisions with care, energy and a deep sense of responsibility.
AAA accomplished a great deal and on many fronts: 1) public engagement and public presence; 2) publishing; 3) external relations; 4) governance and programming structures; 5) internal relations (members, meetings, and sections); and 6) AAA’s financial state.
Public engagement and presence
Between December 2015 and the close of 2016, AAA engaged in no fewer than 20 advocacy efforts in the form of letters and public statements on issues brought to the Association most often by members. These statements reflect the kinds of concerns that many members care about, including harmful and draconian state policies and practices, violations of human rights, academic freedom and indigenous rights, and the systemic and structural violence of racialization. The issues that reach the leadership are rarely easy to address. Each requires study and due diligence, a consideration of who is to be helped and who may be harmed by AAA actions. We have no way of knowing how successful we are in effecting change. I have confidence that by keeping to our discipline’s core values and the Association’s established processes, our added voice matters.
“World on the Move” is a form of global engagement on a timely, enduring, and difficult to discuss topic that matters to anthropologists and to the larger public. Migration ties to many anthropological concerns, past and present and across the subfields—archaeology, and biological, cultural, linguistic, and practicing anthropology. From all these angles, perspectives, and locations, anthropologists have a lot to teach each other and the world about this topic. “World on the Move” represents what AAA can do so well: bring anthropological voices into the public conversation on complex topics. The time is now to secure funding to ensure “World on the Move” develops its full potential.
Other activities included the Working Group on Racialized Police Brutality/Extrajudicial Violence; the proposal to create the AAA Social Mobilization Platform to Improve Responses to Global Public Health Crises and an Emergency Humanitarian Response Network; Open Anthropology’s collections and commentaries by editors Jason Antrosio and Sally Han on critical issues of our times; and the Association’s ever-growing social media presence that reflects AAA’s capacity for timely participation in critical public discussions.
Publishing
The year’s big effort on the publishing front was engaging a thorough and thoughtful process to secure a publishing partner agreement to begin January 2018. Over the course of 2016, steps taken included: activating the Executive Board’s Publishing Partner Advisory Group (AG) charged with guiding the Request for Proposals (RFP) prepared by AAA’s publishing consultant; issuing the RFP in April to eight publishers (four publishers submitted proposals); assessing the proposals; interviewing the semi-finalists; and recommending a preferred publishing partner to the Executive Board in October. Accepting the AG’s recommendation, the Executive Board authorized the executive director to negotiate the new publishing contract. In the end, Wiley was chosen to continue representing our organization and I am confident they will deliver a digital future that fully supports the portfolio of AAA publications, our collective publishing program.
Other actions and projects included: establishing the AAA President’s Working Group on Tenure & Promotion Guidelines for Writing and Publishing Forms, the goal of which is to help tenure and promotion committees assess new forms of writing and publishing; moving on Cultural Heritage matters by developing a set of principles by which the Executive Board may assess the merits of proposed partnerships, initiatives or requests for advocacy, and AAA signing onto the international “Declaration on the Need to Protect and Safeguard Cultural Heritage in the Americas and the Caribbean”; and advancing AAA’s ongoing effort to foster relationships with sister societies by participating in over a dozen conferences or other events in the US and internationally, writing advocacy letters on behalf of various international programs subject to budget cuts or elimination, and inaugurating the successful AAA/African Studies Association joint conference “Innovation, Transformation and Sustainable Futures in Africa,” held June 1–4 (2016) in Dakar, Senegal.
Member programs and projects
AAA took a momentous step in establishing the Members Programmatic Advisory & Advocacy Committee (M-PAAC), the members’ go-to committee designed to address the eight key areas of ethics, human rights, labor and workforce, public policy, racialized minorities, gender equity, the practicing-applied-public sector, and world anthropologies as these areas relate to anthropology, anthropologists, and the Association. In creating M-PAAC, AAA expects to remain at the forefront in responding to these critical areas of scholarly interest and public engagement. It was my great privilege to appoint M-PAAC’s dream leadership team: Tricia Redeker Hepner as the first M-PAAC chair, with Ramona Perez and Keri Brondo serving as chairs of M-PAAC’s two subcommittees.
To better assess the twin issues of contingent labor and the labor market for anthropologists, and to better determine how the Association may contribute to improving the situation, I appointed Alex Barker, AAA’s VP/PE to chair the Working Group on Anthropology Non-Tenure Track Faculty Employment, charged with recommending ways the Association can contribute to reducing employment vulnerability of non-tenure track faculty in anthropology. Recognizing that a main obstacle to addressing the labor issues in anthropology is a dearth of reliable information, AAA’s Anthropology Information Central features a series of data reports based on primary research conducted by the Association during the year.
Under the able leadership of Sam Martinez, the 115th AAA Annual Meeting was a great success. Sam offered a powerful theme (“Evidence, Accident, Discovery”), with dynamic featured speakers (Melissa Harris-Perry, Frans de Waal), and a rich set of panels, special sessions, and events. In 2016, AAA also took up the issue of meeting affordability, invited bids for 2022 and 2023 meeting sites, and came to successful agreement with CASCA for a joint 2023 meeting in Canada.
Finally, Treasurer Ted Hamann reports that AAA is in good financial health, enabling the Association to serve members with all these important programs and exciting projects, which we look forward to fulfilling in the coming year.
In making its decisions, the great challenge for AAA leadership is to balance multiple mandates, which sometimes operate in contradiction. This means leadership must act in accordance with AAA’s mission and stated values, the laws that govern the Association, its responsibility to ensure the Association is sustained over time, and the varied points of view among its members. In 2016, AAA took on a lot, thought things through and, perhaps most importantly, acted. I’d say it’s been very worth our while.
The AAA has been exceptionally active in 2016, as seen in President Alisse Waterston’s 
AAA is pleased to announce the 2016 recipient of the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology is Richard Bauman. Bauman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Communication and Culture, and Folklore at Indiana University. Bauman’s work significantly reshaped linguistic anthropology to make it a stronger presence within the discipline and enhanced anthropology’s visibility in such disciplines as communication, media studies, folklore, history, linguistics, literary and performance studies.
Congratulations to Jason De León, the 2016 recipient of the Margaret Mead Award for his scholarship, including the book, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Sonoran Desert Migrant Trail.
Jeremy Arac Sabloff is the 2016 recipient of the Alfred Vincent Kidder Award for Eminence in the Field of American Archaeology.
Shirley Fiske is this year’s recipient of the Solon T. Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology, which “offers an opportunity to honor exemplary anthropologists for outstanding recent achievements that have contributed to the development of anthropology as an applied science.”
Seth Holmes is this year’s recipient of the Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology for his book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farm Workers in the United States.
The AAA and Oxford University Press are pleased to announce the recipient of the AAA/Oxford University Press Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology is Bianca Williams.
AAA is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2016 Anthropology in Media Award is Mark Schuller. Since receiving his PhD in 2007, Schuller has become one of the most productive and dedicated scholars on the contemporary anthropological scene.
The American Anthropological Association and the Committee on Minority Affairs in Anthropology (CMIA) are pleased to announce the selection of Milena Melo as recipient of the 2016 AAA Minority Dissertation Fellowship. Melo is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Anthropology department at the University of Texas at San Antonio. As a low-income, undocumented, female student of color, Melo is highly motivated to ensure the inclusion of voices and experiences of those who are unable to be present when policies are made. She is committed to conducting anthropological research that reduces barriers to healthcare, social inequality, and disenfranchisement faced by marginalized and minority populations in the United States.
The American Anthropological Association’s Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology (CoGEA) has honored Dr. Patricia Zavella (University of California, Santa Cruz) with the 2016 CoGEA Award in recognition of her sustained academic career devoted to the study of women’s work, gender discrimination and inequalities based on sex.
