Milwaukee’s best

I spent this weekend at the Society for Cultural Anthropology Meetings in fabulous Milwaukee (the “gathering place by the water” or so I’m told) which was a meeting I enjoyed for its small size and considerable enthusiasm. The topic was “translations of value” and it was, unlike the impossibly vague and perfunctory themes of the AAA, actually carried through in a number of the panels and talks. By far my favorite, and that of many others, was a rich presentation by Robert Foster (whose book on Mortuary ritual I had just discovered a few days prior to leaving) on soft-drink advertising and the “economy of qualities” (Michel Callon) that brought together a rich reading of economic sociology, business school and advertising literature on brands, images of melanesians consuming soft drinks and activists protesting Coca-Cola. A large part of the talk was devoted to the strategies of contemporary corporations that co-qualify (co-brand) products in “cooperation” with consumers, and what this does to the notion of surplus value among other things. I can’t wait for the book.

The keynote was by Timothy Mitchell, and it too focused on work in economic sociology (everyone’s favorite new subdiscipline?). Mitchell told two stories of the creation and formatting of economies: Edison’s creation of the power networks (as told by Thomas Hughes) in the early twentieth Century, and Hernando De Soto’s Hayekian re-titling experiments in Peru (the economist, not the explorer, though come to think of it, has anyone ever seen them together— and I suppose the original deSoto was involved in re-titling after a fashion, funny that Mitchell didn’t remark on it).

The panel I contributed to as discussant was also great, no thanks to me of course, but to the two anthropologists at Baylor Medical school working with a segment of the International Hap Map Project (Deepa Reddy and Jennifer Hamilton). Their presentations captured some of the incredibly complex ethical negotiations that currently happen around the collection of genetic material from different populations, and the “ethical provenance” (as Jennifer called it) of these materials. The HapMap project is the successor to the Human Genome Diversity Project, which was the subject of Jenny Reardon’s book Race to the Finish.

There were still far too many panels to catch all of them, and a lot of talks I would have liked to see, but the meeting is nonetheless a lot more interactive and coherent (or self-referential and insular, if that’s your bag) for its small size.

In related news, the journal of the society, Cultural Anthropology, has new editors (Kim and Mike Fortun) and a new editorial board (including yours truly). There were some very interesting ideas at the board meeting about how the journal can take greater advantage of the Internet, deal with the reality of AnthroSource, and strengthen the impact and reach of articles published in the journal. Cultural Anthroplogy remains one of the top three or four journals in Anthropology (with Current Anthropology leading the field), but its clear that both its impact and its style could stand to be broadened. There are a lot of good ideas on the table, so the journal could do some really innovative stuff (especially relative to the normal stable of anthropology journals). In any case, watch this space, and I hope SM readers will contribute ideas and suggestions as it evolves.

ckelty

Christopher M. Kelty is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has a joint appointment in the Institute for Society and Genetics, the department of Information Studies and the Department of Anthropology. His research focuses on the cultural significance of information technology, especially in science and engineering. He is the author most recently of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke University Press, 2008), as well as numerous articles on open source and free software, including its impact on education, nanotechnology, the life sciences, and issues of peer review and research process in the sciences and in the humanities.

One thought on “Milwaukee’s best

  1. I think you should put one of those ‘magic eye’ diagrams on the cover so that when you unfocus your eyes a hughe three-dimensional picture of Paul Rabinow’s head pops out.

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