Tracking the Future at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

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(the Wow! signal, visualized by Benjamin Crowell, from Wikimedia)

In a few days, many anthropologists will attend the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.  For several days, they will track back and forth to airless, windowless rooms that exist in a strange non-place and non-time: a conference space replete with kitschy designs, cheap gilding, stentorian carpeting that suggests transit lounges and casinos at any time from the 1970s to the 1990s.  But, given the growing horror just outside these conference-room bunkers—the growing crypto-fascism from the authoritarian government, almost-certain ecological apocalypse, economic and political collapse—it’s doubly important to look to the future as the anticipation of hope, of fear and, importantly, of radical difference and change. 

And this is what has happened.  This year, there are an unprecedented number of papers and panels exploring the contours of futures in the contexts of anthropological method and theory with the ultimate goal of working to change the present.  This is clearly anthropology’s anticipatory moment, and we see scholars from multiple subdisciplines (STS, environmental anthropology, urban anthropology, etc.) exploring what futures might be evoked in the space of anthropological intervention.  The methods and potentials of this are being shaped right now, and this year represents a watershed moment. 

In a way, I hope that this doesn’t coalesce into a canonical approach to futures.  The multidirectionality of these evocations is the best feature of this round of AAA papers: urban, multispecies, reproductive technologies, SF, dystopia, journalism, government policy.  Here the future is multiple, and my instinct would be to contribute to open futures through our anthropologies, rather than joining with, say, the dismal science to close off difference through model-driven prognostications. 

I have worked through the obstinate, online AAA schedule and commented on some of the more obvious, future-oriented panels.  That said, there are many, many papers that evoke future world-making that are not in this list, but even this partial schedule is impressive and even revolutionary (at least to anthropology).  Of course, if you know of something I’ve missed, please comment and I’ll correct my omission!  

And, by the way, shame on AAA for scheduling 3 science fiction panels at exactly the same time (2-3:45 pm on Saturday afternoon)!  Three!  The only good thing is that you can attend one, and then retire to our gaming salon where you’ll find free copies of our book, “Gaming Anthropology” and, of course, drink tickets. 

(2-0150) Anthropocene Landscapes, Infrastructures and Futures

Wednesday, November 29

12:00 PM - 1:45 PM

Location: Marriott, Marriott Ballroom Salon 2 

My notes: Anthropocene brings together multiple temporal strands around contested landscapes through ecologies, technologies, geographies, etc.  These papers consider these multiple, future entanglements and the way they traffic between past and present. 

(2-0340) Future Cities: When, Where and How?

Wednesday, November 29

2:15 PM - 4:00 PM

Location: Marriott, Madison A 

My notes: Cities are informed by developmental futures envisioned by policy makers and technocrats, but these developmental narratives are also open to appropriation and resistance—to other futures less yoked to neoliberal growth. 

(3-0105) Futures Come to Matter: Future as Analytic in Ethnography

Thursday, November 30

8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

Location: Marriott, Virginia Suite C

My notes: Given that “the future” is a discursive and representational tool for organizing the present, how might anthropologists utilize this as an “analytic” in their ethnography? 

(3-0295) Future Matters: Anticipatory Knowledge and Scenario-modeling

Thursday, November 30

10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

My notes: In the style of Ulf Hannerz’s work in “Writing Future Worlds” (and he’s on the panel as well), these papers consider the “anticipatory futures” produced by various organizations in the form of “scenarios”. 

(3-1035) Fabricating Utopics: Hacking Imaginaries

Thursday, November 30

4:15 PM - 6:00 PM

Location: Marriott, Thurgood Marshall North

My notes: The panel looks to appropriations of the spirit and methods of “hacking” across a spectrum of activisms vis-à-vis the state and the community.  Hacking here refers to subverting neo-liberal ideologies to issues of social justice and parity.

 

 (3-1005) Future matters: Ethnography of Weather and Climate Knowledge and Forecasting

Thursday, November 30

4:15 PM - 6:00 PM

Location: Marriott, Harding

My notes: This panel considers anthropological approaches to “atmospheric futures” through ethnographic examinations of the various anticipatory models people and communities produce. 

(4-0180) Open and Closed Futures

Friday, December 1

8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

Location: Marriott, Roosevelt 2

My notes: These papers reflect on the “temporal turn” in anthropology and look to different examples of “dilating” or “constricting” through the politics of temporal practice. 

(4-0810) The Other Side of Hope

Friday, December 1

2:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Location: Marriott, McKinley

My notes: Extrapolating on Miyazaki’s vision of “hope” in a world of looming disaster, these papers consider the dystopian possibilities that lie on the “otherside” of more hopeful multispecies and techno-imaginaries of the future. 

(4-1225) Queering Futures: Futures as Forces, Futures as Products

Friday, December 1

4:15 PM - 6:00 PM

Location: Marriott, Roosevelt 4

My notes: Queering the future means undermining normative (and heteronormative) visions of a future that is always already an abyssal extension of the ideological-normative “now”. 

(5-0810) “Realists” of a Larger Reality: Anthropological intersections with Science Fiction

Saturday, December 2

2:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Location: Marriott, Virginia Suite C

My notes: This panel looks to intersections of anthropology and science fiction, and to the ways both have been informed by contemporary social movements.  The hope is that the confluence of all of these will open up alternatives to the fascist dystopia in which we live. 

(5-0900) Ethnography Otherwise: Imagining More-than-human Worldings through Science Fiction

Saturday, December 2

2:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Location: Omni, Congressional A

My notes: the Anthropocene demands new tropes for describing these complex imbrications of technology, nature, non-humans that transcend the facile binarisms (nature v. culture) that have characterized anthropological figurations.  These papers look to science fiction as a source for re-figuring these relationships in anthropological interventions. 

(5-0750) Toying with Our Teleologies: Anthropologists Read SF

Saturday, December 2 2:00 PM - 3:45 PM Location: Marriott, Thurgood Marshall West

My notes: The papers in this session look to SF as a provocation to anthropology and as a resource for its interventions.  But this is a critical entanglement, and includes interrogating the politics of SF (and anthropology-in-SF).  

(6-0105) Technological Futures

Sunday, December 3

8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

Location: Marriott, Delaware Suite A

My notes: this panel considers the ways technological developments are bound up with images and practice of the future, ones that swing wildly between utopia and dystopia.