The Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association begins this week (17th-21st November).The hybrid format includes asynchronous, ‘view-on-demand’ library of podcasts and videos, synchronous ‘virtual sessions’, live broadcast sessions from Baltimore, and non-broadcast in-person events for attendees. A little of something for everyone? AAGE members are, as usual, well represtented at the conference, but not always the easiest to find. The AAA Aging and the Life Course Interest Group has put together a list of sessions that would be of interest to our members.
There are two events we especially want to highlight: the annual Interest Group Interlocutor event, and the Interest Group Sponsored Session
(3-2492) Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing: Exploring the future of multimodal-digital ethnography
Friday19th, 10:15 AM-12:00 PM Virtual SPECIAL EVENT (link for attendees)
Jay Sokolovsky and Maria Cattell will interview Danny Miller, Charlotte Hawkins and Xinyuan Wang – Co-Sponsored by the Senior Anthropology Section of AAA
This conversation will bring to the meeting Professor Danny Miller (Univ College London), director of a newly completed multisited global ethnography study, the Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing (ASSA – https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/assa/about/), and two post-doctoral researchers from the project, Xinyuan Wang and Charlotte Hawkins. This conversation ultimately explores three grand issues: 1. As a successor to the global “Project A.G.E.” (Age, Generation and Experience), carried out in the 1980s, how does the ASSA Project move forward a comparative, cross-cultural understanding of older adulthood in the 21st Century? 2. Can the methodological efforts of the ASSA project properly transcend what Gabriele de Seta calls “the three lies of digital ethnography”? These are: illusions of the networked field-weaver, the eager participant-lurker and the expert fabricator. 3. How do the methods of the ASSA project inform anthropology about the possibilities of fieldwork and research dissemination in the age of COVID?
INVITED ROUNDTABLE OF THE AAA INTEREST GROUP ON AGING AND THE LIFE COURSE –
(4-2872) Precarious Connections: Exploring Social Disconnection Across the Life Course
Saturday 20th, 10:15AM – 12:00 PM (Virtual), Society for Cultural Anthropology (link for attendees)
Participants: Aaron Seaman, Janelle Taylor, Jolanda Lindenberg, Celeste Pang, Elizabeth Fein,
Daina Stanley