Best conference moment: Lawrence Cohen describing Alan Klima as “a cross between Walter Benjamin and Neal Cassady.” That totally cracked me up.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Ran into the old grad school crowd in DC: Peter (with whom I was on a panel), Leif, Sara, Josh and Michelle. There seems to be much less of the Ithaca diaspora here this time; I wonder whether it’s something of a backlash from the debacle of last year’s conference (see the posts of 10/21, 10/22 and 10/23). But as I walk through the sterile gleam of the Marriott, with its hotel rooms costing well over a hundred dollars each, and $160 conference fees, I am always struck by how we anthropologists insist on meeting at places like this that graduate students, or most important, our informants — we almost all “study down” anyhow — wouldn’t be able to afford. (I barely could, myself; Bulletproof Vest happened to be fortuitously house-sitting in Vienna, VA, at the end of the Orange Metro line, and so I got to cancel my still-expensive reservations at the hotel a few blocks down the street.)

Of course, conference attending does not at all preclude any meaningful engagement with the people with which we study and work. But such an annual ritual regularly throws into relief the distance between the hotel’s deep carpets, and the staff people of color refilling the water glasses and changing the sheets and (depending on the anthropologist) the relatively benighted people we study. Or maybe this distance is an artifact of a kind of anthropological arrogance; heard many times during last year’s debate was the refrain “And we’re anthropologists, of all people!” — as if we were somehow, by the sheer nature of our work, naturally capable of a deeper social commitment than any other scholar. Or, as if anthropologists couldn’t be as selfish and backbiting as the rest of the academy.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the mini-crisis, in the last decade or so, within Asian American Studies as well: that many younger scholars, armed with techniques and vocabularies of French origin, were increasingly estranging themselves from “the community” through which the discipline was given birth (and, even more criminally, abandoning the ideals of social justice and empowerment). The crusty, grizzled activists, on the other hand, were sitting on wilted laurels, presenting (if at all anymore) papers that were largely descriptive and devoid of analysis, their undisciplined quality transformed into the exemplary virtue of Sticking It To The Man. All of this, of course, are inaccurate generalizations.

But I do remember, for instance, a conference in Seattle when a graduate student presented a paper on the generation of Filipino immigrants who arrived in the ’20s and ’30s, with a gently critical view of their ideas of patriotism and belonging. One of the many grayish-haired people in the audience stood up immediately at the beginning of the Q&A session and uttered these three fateful words: “You weren’t there.” The dialogue, if one could call it that, immediately shut down. But it is symptomatic of how the field, in its extended period of adolescent pains, is both deeply rooted in counterhegemonic ’60s principles and commitment to “the community” [cheap shot here: it's all just lip service] and at the same time still struggling for legitimacy in a minimally, politely “multicultural” academe [cheap shot here: to be accepted in the eye of the (white) beholder].

All this intellectual handwringing (and for some, damaging to their careers) has been arguably unproductive, but at least the issue is repeatedly brought to the surface. Anthropology, perhaps in contrast, has traipsed along its own merry way, only a few decades removed from sleeping with the colonial enemy (and the repeated cries of penance that followed it). But in the end, the perhaps inherent, queasy disjuncture in any hotel conference may be attributable to the very real gulf, in any discipline, between university and “the community.” I am not necessarily someone who would claim the student body as the community which I serve (particularly the students who I know take an Asian American studies class because they think it’s an easy A!). For me, it must be more — a wider and deeper involvement with “one’s people” outside of the manicured quads of the campus — though my time and energy always seem to be lacking in this aspect. Of course, the main justification for these large hotels seems to be the logistics of accommodating a few hundred panels anyhow, with which no university would dare burden itself.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’m also (somewhat belatedly) trying to figure out my anthropology syllabus. While it would be easier on me, I hate assigning the same things over and over, and I’ve never repeated books in successive semesters simply because it’s boring. It’s hard figuring out the right calibration; my favorite ethnographies are either too “esoteric” or too theory-laden for the first-years to appreciate. At the same time, I want them to be able to sink their teeth into actual ethnography.

Last spring was, I think, a successful one, though one student rightly criticized me for not assigning any ethnographies per se. Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down is a triumph of journalistic writing, but in terms of anthropological principles and ethics skirts, at times, on the dubious. Donald Stull and Michael Broadway’s Slaughterhouse Blues was, strictly speaking, a sociological study and not the single-sited, area-focused work of which most anthropologists are fond. (This was, however, something of a surprise hit: I wouldn’t have figured a book on the American meatpacking industry would generate such great discussions.). In any case, both books had their fans (and of course I am one): one student said he would be “greatly disturbed” if I didn’t reassign Fadiman this semester, and another thought I should do Slaughterhouse Blues again because it was “important for students to read about social inequity.”

I also used to assign at least one book on music — I’m sure you regular readers know how invested I am in it — but haven’t done so in a long time. My students have read books on techno, hiphop and dancehall — not all of them ethnographies though — and enjoyed them, I think. (My former student Jean Jacket thanked me the other night for assigning Deena Weinstein’s Heavy Metal — as she put it, “it got me a boyfriend.”)

So far I’ve boiled it down to a Bay Area-centered fall. (As an outsider, I explain to the students every semester, I’m very fascinated with American culture.) I’m looking through Carla Menjivar’s Fragmented Lives, on Salvadoran immigrants in SF (I wonder how it compares with Sarah Mahler’s American Dreaming, which actually upset a couple of people one semester), and J.A. English-Lueck’s cultures@siliconvalley, and both look quite fascinating. Rebecca Solnit’s well-written and still relevant (though really rather breezy) Hollow City, on gentrification in SF, might be a good quick addition as well. (Plus excerpts / articles from Gray Brechin’s Imperial San Francisco, or the Castro Street chapter from Frances Fitzgerald’s Cities on a Hill, a screening of Curtis Choy’s documentary The Fall of the I-Hotel, maybe something of mine about Daly City…)

The other combination I’m considering has not much relevance with each other. Leo Chavez’s Shadowed Lives, on undocumented Latino immigrants in San Diego, was a real eye-opener for many of the students a year ago; the fact that Chavez also made two documentaries in connection with his work makes it a no-brainer to assign to an intro class.

The other is Michael Moffatt’s Coming of Age in New Jersey, about which I’m still on the fence. His ethnography on Rutgers students is hilarious, well-written and sucks you in; it also features a chapter I’ve used before that beautifully illustrates how brilliant insights can emerge from seemingly banal but detailed participant observation. But it also happens to be quite dated (the research was done in the ’80s) — which might, in fact, be a good launching point for discussion. (The attitudes toward race, for instance, are pretty hair-raising; the chapters on sex, at least at first skim, seem to just go on in somewhat creepy detail about students’ sexual experiences / fantasies.) Or maybe toss Tanya Luhrmann’s (I’m a big fan of her work) Of 2 Minds in the mix.

Yesterday at Moe’s I bought three more ethnographies that look extremely interesting as well. One of them, Setha Low’s Behind the Gates, seems like a better companion to Chavez’s ethnography mentioned above; it’s a study on gated communities, and should make the students think about fear, security, borders, labor and so on.

But then I could always go back to the old standbys: women in rural Iraq, fellatio rituals in New Guinea, poverty in Naples…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Rob O’Brien — nothing like having a fast blog trigger finger (yes, AAAUnite is a blog devoted to the whole mess) — has been working mightily to organize AAA members, including the possibility of a counter-conference. Check out his letter to the AAA President, which just about perfectly encapsulates what I hope are many of the association members’ sentiments.

The AAA Executive Board’s decision to move the conference to Atlanta just plain stinks (and yes, before anyone writes in, I have no idea what it takes or costs to run a big non-profit organization). For logistical reasons alone, the decision is incredibly impractical; at least San Jose was in the same time zone as San Francisco. (The date is also when universities start going on winter break, or plunge students into finals week.) A good number of academics (and certainly graduate students) cannot easily afford to change plans so drastically.

Most important, as I’ve already written, the decision is terrible in principle; it results in hardly any benefit to the union. The only real winner here is the Hilton group, and AAA’s rank capitulation to them makes me ashamed — a nice gob of spit in the face of the 4,000 locked-out employees.

I’ve just sent a letter to my department chair at SF State, hoping that there might be a chance — though it might be a logistical impossibility — that a counter-conference could be hastily arranged here. We’re close enough to downtown, after all — closer than San Jose or Atlanta — and I’m betting that there would be a good amount of angry anthropologists with non-refundable tickets who would want to participate. I can’t think of a better opportunity to discuss — and demonstrate — the relationship between the academy and local communities, or the anthropologist’s ethical responsibilities.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’m a little stunned:

October 22, 2004

MEMORANDUM

To: AAA members
From: Liz Brumfiel, AAA President, and the AAA Executive Board
Subject: The 2004 Annual Meeting

In a teleconference held on October 21, 2004, the AAA Executive Board voted to move the 2004 Annual Meeting from the San Francisco Hilton on November 17-21 to the Atlanta Hilton, December 15-19, 2004, a change in both venue and date.

Many of you are already aware that the San Francisco Hilton Hotel and thirteen other hotels in San Francisco are in a labor contract standoff with Local 2 of UNITE/HERE, the union representing cooks, dishwashers, bellmen, servers, room cleaners and switchboard operators. Union members struck the hotels several weeks ago and were subsequently locked out. Picket lines are posted at the entrances to the Hilton, and it appears likely that contract negotiations between the union and the multi-employer group representing the 14 hotels will not be settled by November 17, the time originally scheduled for the AAA’s Annual Meeting.

On October 18, AAA’s Executive Board held a teleconference meeting in order to consider potential responses to the lockout situation. These included moving our function space from the Hilton to other locations in San Francisco and moving the meeting to other cities, including Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago, Oakland, Philadelphia and San Jose. On October 19-20, the Board conducted a poll in which AAA members who had pre-registered for the meeting were asked to express their preference for what, at the time, seemed to be the three most likely possibilities for the meeting: staying at the San Francisco Hilton, moving the meeting to San Jose, or canceling the meeting all together. A summary of the poll results is provided in the table below.

Two factors weighed heavily in the Board’s subsequent decision. The first factor was the wishes of the AAA membership. Fifty-six percent of those responding to the poll favored moving the meeting to San Jose or canceling the meeting entirely as their first choice. Only 44% favored holding the meeting in the San Francisco Hilton as a first choice. Moreover, a great many respondents, including some who voted to keep the convention at the Hilton, indicated that they would find it impossible to cross picket lines and that they hoped that the AAA would not meet in a hotel that was locking out unionized employees.

The second factor was the financial position of the AAA. While we could not be sure that the San Francisco Hilton would recover the full amount, breaking the contract with the San Francisco Hilton would expose the Association to potential damages in excess of $1.2 million plus legal fees. Losses of that magnitude would have meant a reduction in program and services for AAA members, and/or the need for a special assessment or voluntary contributions from AAA members.

In response to our informing the Hilton that many of our members would boycott their hotel, the Hilton made us an offer: they would allow us to move our meeting to the Atlanta Hilton this year without the threat of a law suit, if we agreed to return to the San Francisco Hilton in 2006 (when we were scheduled to meet in Atlanta). In effect, the San Francisco Hilton and the Atlanta Hilton would trade their years of AAA meetings. However, the Atlanta Hilton was booked for our scheduled dates of November 17-21. December 15-19 was the first open date that the Board thought reasonable.

The Board realizes that this option is far from ideal. It entails substantial expense and inconvenience for all our members. Many of you have non-refundable tickets and will have to pay a $100 change fee. Some of you have already paid for your hotel rooms in San Francisco. Some of you will already have plans for the new dates. Still, this option allows the AAA to avoid two very serious outcomes: asking our members to cross picket lines and exposing the AAA to a $1.2 million suit by the Hilton.

The sad irony is that the Atlanta Hilton is a non-union hotel. The unionization of the Atlanta Hilton will be a battle for another day. But even the San Jose option would have meant signing a contract with the local Hilton. A committee appointed by the Executive Board last spring is developing a policy to favor living wage municipalities and unionized hotels in choosing future meeting venues. We will also seek a strike cancellation clause in future contracts with meeting hotels.

We deeply regret the cost and inconvenience of this change. We were presented with a situation not of our making, with no good options. The AAA staff moved very quickly to inform us of the situation as it arose and to explore the several possibilities available to us. An additional advantage of this move: it will be easier to orchestrate than the move to San Jose, and it gives the AAA staff slightly more time to engineer the move. The result should be an annual meeting that runs smoothly.

What isn’t being mentioned above (why?) is a letter dated Oct. 21st from the San Jose Convention and Visitor’s Bureau committing not only to space in the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and hotel space that covers “100% of [the] guest room requirement,” but also hotel rates that “include a financial consideration estimated at $150,000 that will help to offset any cancellation fees” and a promise to negotiate with airlines about reducing change fees. (The letter is already being circulated through anthropology e-mail lists, but I’m a little wary of reproducing it here.) While one point may have been made — the union apparently estimated a $5 million loss to San Francisco if the AAA, the biggest conference in the city of the month of November, pulls out — it still leaves the union hanging, with little incentive for or pressure on the San Francisco hotel collective to end the lockout. The financial fears of the AAA are clear — and certainly there will be association members who will not support a special assessment or pay extra dues — but surely the fine can be negotiated, and there will always be members (like me) who would be willing to pony up something. (Granted, I can donate that money to Local 2 now.)

Final Score: Hilton wins, UNITE HERE still gets nothing, and the AAA… why do I hear the sound of a toilet flushing in the distance?

So: Atlanta, in December. As my friend Jeff quipped, however, in light of the “civil-rights clause” in the union’s demands, “I assure you that the Atlanta Hilton will have plenty of African Americans on the staff.” [rimshot]

Popularity: 1% [?]