The UC Irvine School of Social Sciences and Wenner Gren Foundation present
Criticism Inside, Alternative Alongside:
Organizing Otherwise to Intervene in Anthropology's Future
That the future of anthropology is up for grabs is not new. Anthropology has always been the outcome of struggle, and anthropologists and their allies have long sought to speak truth to power and to convey their own and others' stories to address inequality, domination, and violence in all its forms. Our record is mixed, to say the least.
Yet the opportunity for intervention arrives anew, and seizing it requires confronting the methods of knowledge production/dissemination and professional reproduction together. What are the possibilities and limitations of working inside, outside, alongside, against, at the edges, or in the hybrid in-between spaces of anthropology’s multiple and heterogeneous publics? And how ought we imagine and describe the position of “public,” “applied,” or “practicing” anthropologists (all inadequate idioms) vis-a-vis academic anthropology and the organizations with whom they work?
This interview series, supported by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, will look to new spaces of inquiry and intervention outside the academy—in tech, finance, and nonprofit worlds, specifically—to explore new forms of knowledge production and dissemination and new kinds of organization and communication. The webinar series will feature anthropologists and other social scientists working across institutional boundaries and with partners outside the academy to put into practice alternative financial and economic arrangements. Speakers will take up what it means to make anthropology—and anthropologists—accountable to its history and to the political economic demands of the moment. And they will investigate what forms critique takes, and what other kinds of intervention are possible, in industries, from finance to tech to philanthropy, that hold concentrated power over the material lives of so many around the world.
Organized by Bill Maurer (Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Professor of Anthropology,
and Director of the Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion, UC Irvine)
and Taylor C. Nelms (Senior Director of Research, Filene Research Institute)
With Kim Fernandes (University of Pennsylvania), Nina Medvedeva (University of Minnesota),
Nima Yolmo (UC Irvine), and Chris Chan (University of Washington)
October 23, 2020 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#1 - Introducing the Series: Theory and Practice at the Edges of Academia
With Bill Maurer, UC Irvine & Taylor C. Nelms, Filene Research Institute
Click here for full transcription of the event.
November 6, 2020 | 9-10am PST/12-1pm U.S. EST
#2 - Civil and Civic Manipulations: Activism, Media, and Public Policy
With Joan Donovan, Research Director, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public
Policy, Harvard University Kennedy School
Click here for full transcription of the event.
December 4, 2020 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#3 - Communicating and Community-Building: Working in, with, and against Big Tech
With Mary L. Gray, Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research and Associate Professor,
Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Anthropology, and Gender
Studies, Indiana University
Click here for full transcription of the event
December 18, 2020 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#4 - Building Race as an Analytic into Anthropology, Within and Outside the Academy
With Sareeta Amrute, Director of Research, Data & Society
Click here for full transcription of the event
January 8, 2021 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#5 - Expanding the Anthropological Imagination: Working in, with, and against Wall
Street
With Hannah Appel, Associate Professor of Anthropology, UCLA
Click here for full transcription of the event
January 22, 2021 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#6 - Precarious Professions, Organizing for the Future With Eli Thorkelson
Click here for full transcription of the event
February 5, 2021 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#7 - Public, Open/Libre, Commons: Cultures of Liberation and the Liberation of Culture
in Anthropology
With Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Reader, Department of Social Anthropology, Spanish National
Research Council, Madrid
Click here for full transcription of the event. | Click here for full transcription of the event in Spanish.
February 12, 2021 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#8 - What Does Social Change Look Like?
Angela Russell, Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, CUNA Mutual Group
Click here for full transcription of the event
February 26, 2021| 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#9 - On Emergencies: Socializing and Institutionalizing in Crisis
Federico Neiburg, Professor of Social Anthropology, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal
do Rio de Janeiro
Click here for full transcription of the event
March 12, 2021 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
#10 - Pedagogical and Political Commitments: The Opportunities and Limitations of
Anthropology outside the Academy
With Noelle Stout, Research Faculty, Apple University
Click here for full transcription of the event
April 2, 2021 | 9-10 a.m. PST/12-1 p.m. U.S. EST
Debrief Session: Wenner-Gren Series on the Future of Public Anthropology
With Bill Maurer (Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of
the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion, UC Irvine), Taylor C. Nelms (Senior Director of Research, Filene Research Institute), Nima Yolmo (UC Irvine), and Kim Fernandes (University of Pennsylvania).
Pre-registration is required. A webinar link will be distributed prior to the events
for confirmed registrants.
Contact: Jenny Fan, jcfan@uci.edu
Supported by:
