The SfAA Podcast Archive

An Interview with Dr. Charles Menzies

Charles MenziesProfessor, The University of British Columbia
Charles Menzies is speaking at
(TH-114) Confronting Capitalism, Imperialism, and Settler Colonialism: First Nations Authority and Jurisdiction on the Northwest Coast of Canada
March 27, 2025
3:45 pm – 5:30 pm
Skyline II

Applying Anthropology to Forest Management in the U.S. Pacific Northwest

CHAIRS: CHARNLEY, Susan and CERVENY, Lee (USFS PNRS)
MCLAIN, Rebecca (Independent) Possibilities and Uncertainties in the Emerging Bigleaf Maple Sugaring Industry
CHARNLEY, Susan (USFS PNRS) Community Forestry in the Pacific Northwest: Addressing the “Leftovers” Problem
SIZEK, Julia, COUGHLAN, Michael, and HUBER-STEARNS, Heidi (U Oregon) Planning Under Fire: How Changing Fire Regimes Reshape Forest and Community Planning Across the Pacific Northwest
CERVENY, Lee (USFS PNRS), ARMATAS, Christopher (USFS RMRS), THOMAS, Alyssa (USFS PNRS), RANDRUP, Kristina (UW), and KAMINSKI, Abigail (USFS PNRS) Socio-Spatial Approaches to Engage the Public Around Post-Wildfire Planning in National Forests of the Pacific Northwest
ANDERSON, Robert (USFS NRS) Contested Environmentalisms: Reconciling Care, Killing, and Science in Ecological Management
 
The Pacific Northwest is renowned for its temperate rainforests that harbor rich biodiversity, provide numerous ecosystem services, and form an integral part of the regional identity, while being culturally diverse and growing in population. Managing forests to meet multiple social and ecological goals and interests is challenging. In recent years, the region has met with significant forces of ecological and social change, with implications for community well-being, livelihoods, resource access, local identity, and the region’s forests, including wildlife. This session illustrates how social scientists are applying their research to address a cross-section of forest management issues in the region.
MCLAIN, Rebecca (Independent) Possibilities and Uncertainties in the Emerging Bigleaf Maple Sugaring Industry. Maple sugaring is spreading from northeastern North America to the Pacific Northwest (PNW). The emerging PNW maple sugaring industry centers around bigleaf maple which occurs abundantly on small privately owned forests. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with bigleaf maple sap producers to understand their motivations for engaging in maple sugaring, the types of resources they mobilize, and the logistical and marketing challenges they face. Our study suggests that a thriving bigleaf maple sugar industry could support ecological sustainability while enabling small-scale forest owners to reduce the livelihood risks associated with ecological and economic uncertainties brought about by climate change.
 
CHARNLEY, Susan (USFS PNRS) Community Forestry in the Pacific Northwest: Addressing the “Leftovers” Problem. The forest products industry, and controversy over industrial forest management, have a long history in the Pacific Northwest. Seeking control over how local forests are managed, communities have been purchasing former timber company land to establish community forests, managing them in an environmentally sound way for local community benefit. A key challenge is obtaining funding for land acquisition and operations. Community groups typically can only afford marginal or cutover forestland that others don’t want: “leftovers,” which don’t generate sufficient revenue to be financially sustainable. I explore this challenge and potential policy solutions to support community forestry in the Pacific Northwest.
 
SIZEK, Julia, COUGHLAN, Michael, and HUBER-STEARNS, Heidi (U Oregon) Planning Under Fire: How Changing Fire Regimes Reshape Forest and Community Planning Across the Pacific Northwest. Changing wildfire regimes are disrupting communities and surrounding forests across the Pacific Northwest, upending livelihoods, economies, and forest management plans. As summer events are cancelled, recreation-based businesses shut down, and timber sales burn before they can be harvested, both communities and land managers are faced hard decisions of how and what to prioritize in these landscapes. Drawing on case study research from the 30-year social and economic monitoring for the Northwest Forest Plan, this presentation will examine how federal agency employees and community members attempt to mitigate the disruptive impacts of wildfires through new planning processes.
 
CERVENY, Lee (USFS PNRS), ARMATAS, Christopher (USFS RMRS), THOMAS, Alyssa (USFS PNRS), RANDRUP, Kristina (UW), and KAMINSKI, Abigail (USFS PNRS) Socio-Spatial Approaches to Engage the Public Around Post-Wildfire Planning in National Forests of the Pacific Northwest. Over the past decade, wildfire events have increased in frequency and intensity in Pacific Northwest forests. National forest managers rely on a variety of inputs to guide plans for postfire restoration and recovery in these burned landscapes. We developed a public engagement approach using a socio-spatial tool (human ecology mapping) to identify priority sites and elicit ecosystem benefits as well as preferences for forest treatments and investments. Our presentation focuses on applications in two national forests -- the Mendocino (California) and the Willamette (Oregon). We describe the approach, share project highlights, and discuss applicability to other forest settings.
ANDERSON, Robert (USFS NRS) Contested Environmentalisms: Reconciling Care, Killing, and Science in Ecological Management. Environmental managers often grapple with the need to kill one form of nonhuman life to care for other desirable life. I examine these biopolitical tensions via multiple examples from forest restoration and wildlife management in forested ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest and across the United States. Debates over the science behind lethal ecological decisions are intertwined with questions about governmental authority and competing ideas about which non-human lives are desirable. Examining how “the science” emerges as the focal point of debates over killing of nonhuman life offers insight into how scientific knowledge is deployed and contested in American environmental politics.
Speakers
Susan Charnley, U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Research Social Scientist
Lee Cerveny, Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Research Social Scientist
Rebecca McLain, National Policy Consensus Center, Portland State University, Research Program Director
Julia Sizek, University of Oregon, Research Associate
Robert Anderson

An Interview with Dr. Andrew Gardner

Andrew GardnerProfessor of Anthropology, University of Puget Sound
Andrew Gardner is speaking at
(TH-09) Lost Ethnographers in the Anthropological Tradition
March 27, 2025
9:00 am – 10:45 am
Captain Gray II (Duniway Hotel)
(TH-129) P.K. New Award Presentation
March 27, 2025
5:45 pm – 7:30 pm
Pavillion West
(F-12) Professional Strangers in Rural America: A Redux
March 28, 2025
9:00 am – 10:45 am
Grand Ballroom II
(F-69) Applied Anthropological Research Design in the Middle East and North Africa
March 28, 2025
1:30 pm – 3:15 pm
Captain Gray II (Duniway Hotel)

P.K. New Award Presentation

MODERATORS: WIES, Jennifer (EKU)
HÀ, Tiên-Dung (Stanford U) Power of Identification: Transnational Science and Sacred Obligations in Identifying Vietnamese War Dead
GILLARD, Sharon (UNCC) Mental Health Stigma Disparities: Cultural Identities and Cultural Values Among Black Women
THOMPSON-CAMPITOR, Carly (NAU) “You’re One of Us”: A Reflexive Account of Conducting Insider Research With Lyme Disease Advocates
DISCUSSANT: GARDNER, Andrew (U Puget Sound)
Speakers
Jennifer Wies, Eastern Kentucky University, Associate Provost and Professor of Anthropology
Tien-Dung Ha
Sharon Gillard
Carly Thompson-Campitor, Northern Arizona University
Andrew Gardner, University of Puget Sound, Professor of Anthropology

Invisible Battles: Disability, Power, and Powerlessness

Invisible Battles: Disability, Power, and Powerlessness (Disability TIG)
Speakers:
CHAIR: KLEIN, Wendy (CSULB)LILLY, Samantha (U Michigan) A Case Study on the Efficacy of Argentina’s National Mental Healthcare Law ‘Ley Nº 26.657’MCILRATH, Grace (Luther Coll) Invisible Battles of “Ordinary” Mothers: Stories of Disability Advocacy in IowaROBERTS, Michelle (UKY) Everyday Ablenationalism: “Drawing a Check” in Appalachian KentuckyDREXLER, Livy (MI State U) Not Like Any Other School: How the Environment at a Tribal School Challenges Conceptions of DisabilityKLEIN, Wendy (CSULB) Autism and Bilingual Socialization: Perspectives and Practices in Bilingual Families
Abstract
MCILRATH, Grace (Luther Coll) Invisible Battles of “Ordinary” Mothers: Stories of Disability Advocacy in Iowa. This paper discusses the results from conversations with 17 mothers of children with special health-care needs in Iowa. Interviews covered a range of themes, including pregnancy, discovering the disability, doctors, schools, the child, speaking about the disability, parenting, and leadership. Many mothers expressed their longing for a “normal” life doing things “normal families” often take for granted. A fascinating facet of our explorations were the lessons learned about the invisibility of social movements and activism for disability rights in the United States. The erasure of the dominant role of women leaders fighting for maternal and child healthcare rights was astounding. mcilgr01@luther.edu (W107)
 
Our Mission
The SfAA Podcast Project is a student-led initiative to provide audio records of sessions from the Annual Meetings to the public, free of charge. We strive to include a broad range of interests from diverse perspectives with the intent of extending conversations throughout the years. Our ultimate goal is to make these dialogues accessible to a global audience.

Towards a Cultural Ballistics of Guns

PRIBILSKY, Jason (Whitman Coll) Towards a Cultural Ballistics of Guns. This panel brings together new research into gun culture and the aftereffects of gun violence in the contemporary US. In the spaces between the protracted gun debate between unfettered access to firearms and calls for gun control, we highlight ways ethnographic attention can serve to reveal emerging structures of feelings around guns whereby citizens may be simultaneously “shocked and outraged” but also largely accepting of the conditions of gun violence. We also address new forms of visibility in the wake of gun violence that reveal hidden and as yet unexplored manifestations of the proliferation of firearm dangers. pribiljc@whitman.edu (W-78)

Transformations in the Reproductive Domain: Abortion, Birth, and Advocacy in the Post-Roe Era

MARKS, Alejandra (NMSU) Transformations in the Reproductive Domain: Abortion, Birth, and Advocacy in the Post-Roe Era. In recent years, the legal landscape for abortion has been rapidly changing. While some countries like Mexico, Argentina, and Ireland are liberalizing their policies, others, like the U.S. and Poland, are moving toward greater restriction. To understand the future of reproductive rights in these times, it is crucial to examine the cultural and political history contributing to the reversal of rights and to note the responses this reversal provokes. This panel will draw on interdisciplinary expertise in both US and non-US contexts to discuss how their research on birthing practices, abortion policies, and activist movements inform anthropological contributions to advocacy efforts, locally and globally. amarks@nmsu.edu (TH-102)

The Meaning of Data Is “to Give”: Health Equity in an Era of Community Engagement

MCMULLIN, Juliet (UCI) The Meaning of Data Is “to Give”: Health Equity in an Era of Community Engagement. My paper engages the call for increased inclusion of community in research as critical to health equity and a question of data - a question of how we give. I consider the application of community engagement and data gathering within the framework of health equity, then turn to the implications of the call to expand the possibilities for epistemic and institutional change. In an era of everyone and potentially no one doing health equity, we must ask what health equity means as a right when its manifestations are always at the edge of becoming. (TH-91)

“I know it’s not ethnography!”: Reimagining Ethnographic Research and Training beyond Writing Culture

DURBIN, Trevor (KSU) “I know it’s not ethnography!”: Reimagining Ethnographic Research and Training beyond Writing Culture. While critiques of ethnographic methods abound, the primacy of scholarly norms for ethnography have persisted. Many professionals who use ethnographic methods, however, may never write ethnography but instead use ethnographic research for other purposes. As a result, the practice of ethnographic research, on one hand, and methods training and publication standards, on the other, have diverged. Although a well-known problem in some circles, more explicit attention is needed to the limits and possibilities of ethnographic research that is intentionally emancipated from ethnography as a genre of representation. This panel considers these limits and possibilities of ethnographic research beyond writing culture. tdurbin@ksu.edu (TH-48)

A Graphic Novel about Overdose Prevention: A Vision for an Arts-Based Project Co-Created by Medical Anthropologists and People Who Use Drugs

OTAÑEZ, Marty and BURGES, Nikketa (CU Denver) A Graphic Novel about Overdose Prevention: A Vision for an Arts-Based Project Co-Created by Medical Anthropologists and People Who Use Drugs. We share a draft graphic novel co-created by anthropologists and people who use drugs (PWUDs). This work derives from 76 participants who completed interviews in Colorado in 2021. Participants used some kind of mixture of heroin, methamphetamines, cocaine, and fentanyl and experienced one or more overdoses within the past year. The graphic novel addresses overdose reversals via naloxone, stigma, perspectives on harm reduction interventions, and the drug-user activist movement. By previewing our work and soliciting opinions from the audience, we will design a graphic novel that humanizes PWUDs, promotes safer drug supply, and calls for ending the war on drugs. marty.otanez@ucdenver.edu(TH-18)