Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, November 19-23, 2008.

The theme is "Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement." Highlights include: “HIV/AIDS: Underscoring Needs for and Challenges to Collaboration” is jointly offered from the Association for Africanist Anthropology and the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA). Presenters will analyze why and how we must reconceptualize our theoretical understandings of culture and society, as well as our approaches to health, development, community capacity building and international collaboration to address the HIV/AIDS crisis. “Radical Archaeology as Critical Anthropology: Papers Honoring Thomas C Patterson” is sponsored by the Archeology Division. Papers will examine such issues as the influence of archaeology on anthropological theory and articulations between native communities and archaeologists. “The Legacy of Daphne Berdahl” will be presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe. Daphne Berdahl was one of anthropology’s leading scholars of Central and Eastern Europe. Papers will assess her contributions to such areas as the anthropology of borderlands, memory and consumption. One of the roundtables sponsored by the National Association of Student Anthropologists, “Graduate Student Collaborations and Engagements in Environmental Change Research,” will stress how graduate students can collaborate on integrative research programs focused on the human dimensions of environmental change. The Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness and the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology will cosponsor the invited session “Black Atlantic and Caribbean Religions: Transnational Flows and Local Histories.” This session will bring together researchers documenting the histories of specific religious communities throughout the region. The Society for East Asian Anthropology highlights its session “Reinventing the Chinese State.” This panel shows, through five finelyetched ethnographic portraits, that the Chinese state has reinvented itself as an omnipresent force. NAPA and the Anthropology and Environment Section have collaborated to produce “Researching a Moving Target: Anthropological Models and Methods in an Age of Unprecedented Climate Change.” Experienced researchers and practitioners will show how their work engages their research communities in collaboration, consultation and public debate about how to address global climate change locally. The Society for Visual Anthropology’s 2008 lineup includes a diverse and engaging range of papers, screenings and special events. Highlights include the Annual Film, Video and Interactive Media Festival, which received a record number of contributions and promises to be one of the best programs to date. The Society for the Anthropology of North America will present “New States of War and Policing,” which will focus on the relationship between war-making, states and policing, and probe their convergence in the current global war on terror. The Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology and Society for the Anthropology of Work will co-sponsor “Locating Labor: Anthropologists Engage Service Worker Struggles.” David Bacon, labor photojournalist and author, will put the actions of the San Francisco hotel strike into the context of transnational labor politics and help us delineate an ethnology of labor struggles. The newly formed Society for Anthropological Sciences will sponsor its first AAA sessions, which will highlight various formal methods of collecting, analyzing and visualizing data from the field, in particular methods of cognitive anthropology and social network analysis. The Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists will co-sponsor, with the Executive Program Committee, a session titled “Anthropology and Transgender: Rethinking Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement.” Trans and non-trans anthropologists, historians,lobbyists and community-based activists will constitute the exciting panel of speakers. “Rethinking Race, Biology and Genetics” is an Executive Program Committee session that promises to explore the difficult debate about the biology and social construction of race. Papers show a recognition that anthropology, despite its long engagement with the complex relationship of race, biology and genetics, has yet to formulate an effective and relevant response to the recent surge of public interest in, and misconceptions about, these concepts. “Multiple Indigenous Views of Anthropology’s Future: Envisioning a New Anthropology” is a Presidential Session that will focus on indigenous anthropologists, and their communities, who are engaging in a new, collaborative anthropology that is directed by, rather than directed at, their heritage. The complete programme may be found here: http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/upload/2008prelim_prog-TRUEFINAL.pdf. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/.