SAA/SEG General Assembly, University of Lucerne, 22nd November 2024
Report by Mike Poltorak
Summary
Roundtable Launch: At the SAA General Assembly in the University of Lucerne, the Ascona Charter was launched, highlighting its purpose in addressing pressing issues within anthropology, including precarity and our role in tackling the Triple Planetary Crisis. Participants emphasized the importance of building stronger connections within anthropology, and enhancing its outreach to broader audiences.
A Transformed and Transformative Anthropology: Contributors reflected on the Charter’s role in transforming anthropology, emphasizing its relevance in addressing structural inequalities and societal challenges. Discussions explored how the Charter could serve as a foundation for unity within the discipline.
Broader Engagement and Impact: The Charter was presented as both a tool for internal solidarity and an instrument for external advocacy. Its potential to strengthen anthropology’s position in spaces like museums and cultural institutions was underscored, with calls for more assertive engagement to counter the discipline’s marginalization.
Addressing Precarity: Structural challenges within academia, including the prevalence of temporary employment for anthropologists, were a key focus. Participants advocated for preparing students for diverse career paths beyond academia, emphasizing multi-modal teaching and the need to enhance the discipline’s societal relevance.
Visioning the Interface Commission and Ascona Charter's Future: A meeting in Ascona celebrated the Interface Commission’s history and envisioned the Charter’s future. Discussions included ideas for education initiatives and promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion. Participants emphasized collaborative processes and the importance of connecting anthropologists with diverse audiences to ensure the Charter’s practical application and success.
As Co-President of the Interface Commission with Eda Elif Tibet , I (Mike Poltorak) report on the Roundtable launch of the Ascona Charter in Luzern at the SAA General Assembly.
The Ascona Charter emerged from a collective of anthropologists representing different positionalities and organizations within Switzerland and Europe, including members of SEG, EASA and the Swiss Graduate School of Anthropology who gathered in Ascona from the 3rd to the 5th of June 2024. The specific challenges raised at this meeting ranged from (post)colonial entanglements, rising authoritarianism and climate change to mental health challenges and rampant precarity in academia. The Ascona Charter has been presented to national anthropological associations at the EASA meeting in Barcelona and is currently being curated with position papers for a special issue of the Swiss journal of Anthropology in Spring 2025.
I also share some of the outcomes of a meeting on the 28th and 29th September in Ascona where we gave thanks to our founding members, reflected on the history and connectivity of the interface commission and visioned next steps.
Roundtable- Values and Opportunities for Transformative Anthropology in Switzerland
I welcomed attendees with a Tongan greeting. 'Mālō ho'omou lava mai ahoni' (Literally thank you for having managed to get here today). ' It's not often in Switzerland that you can give a Tongan welcome. But today, with the weather and the difficulty and the challenges of getting here, a Tongan welcome has particular meaning. It is a greeting and welcome that acknowledges the distance and the challenges of having reached a place. It's origin is in the huge distances the Pacific Islanders had to travel to get somewhere. Sometimes they didn't make it. In Switzerland we usually never have any problems getting anywhere.'
It also gave us pause to remember that South Pacific nations are facing threats to their very existence because of the climate crisis.
In my role as Co-President I thanked Professor Bettina Beer. President of the Swiss Anthropological Association SAA/SEG for the roundtable invitation. Drawing our attention to the election result in the US, the floods in Valencia and current discussions at COP 29 in Baku, I shared a presssing and shared concern in relation to how we can contribute to positive change.
' We never have had more knowledge about the challenges we live, but yet we also feel a vulnerability and an inability to act in relation to those crises. Even in positions of privilege. I hope that this charter is one step in the direction of addressing the vulnerability we experience in anthropology and also the challenges we face in acting in relation to it.'
I thanked some of the original signatories of the Charter, whose motivations are presented in the video accompanying the online charter.
Peter Larsen had emphasized how precarity and challenges to the contribution of anthropology inhibits our capacity to engage with the triple planetary crisis. EASA President Anna Ivasiuc suggested that we have to transform from within in how we connect and network. Tobias Haller focused on care of cultural landscapes, hubs of biodiversity. Roberta Colombo compared anthropology to a tall tree with expansive roots. Our branches need to facilitate our reaching out, connecting and finding clarity in the way we communicate with wider audiences in political arenas. Doris Bacalzo visioned a strengthened and reclaimed place for anthropology in society, engaged in contributing to a safer and more liveable world.
Roundtable Presentations
In short presentations Tobias Haller, Nina Khamsy, and Filipe Calvao reflected critically on the charter's goals, offering insights into its implications for the discipline. They all addressed the question ‘How can the Ascona Charter be used to stimulate and support change?
Filipe Calvao framed the discussion by noting that anthropology finds itself at the crossroads of two colliding crises: “the loss of relevance of the discipline” and “a particularly dangerous planetary crisis.” He described this as a “very dangerous combo,” and questioned, “How does the charter help us rebuild the discipline, and how does it help us prepare a future for the discipline?” He further urged anthropology to combat predictability in its reflections and embrace engagement with contradictions and ruptures.
Tobias Haller emphasized the importance of maintaining anthropology’s critical voice, particularly in challenging global frameworks like the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “The SDGs have become the new ecological Bible,” he said, critiquing how they exclude local voices. Haller highlighted anthropology’s responsibility to bring in local communities and ensure that their perspectives are valued.
[We can highly recommend Balancing the Commons in Switzerland, a recent open access book co-edited by Tobias Haller, that addresses this theme in particularly pertinent and interesting ways in Switzerland. ]
The Challenge of Precarity
Nina Khamsy addressed the structural challenges facing anthropologists, noting that in Switzerland, “Only 13% of academic staff have permanent positions, while 85% are in temporary roles.” She argued that the charter must focus on “saving anthropologists, not just saving anthropology,” pointing out that most anthropologists will not remain in academia but will instead work in broader society. Khamsy called for pragmatic strategies, including using the charter to promote multi-modal teaching and preparing students for diverse careers outside academia: “Many anthropologists can go into journalism, museums, and other cultural fields to transmit knowledge in multi-modal ways.”
Collective Engagement and Responsibility
Filipe Calvao expressed skepticism about anthropology’s readiness for collective responsibility, observing that “the practice of the discipline has become increasingly individualized, in part due to the precarious conditions in which many scholars work.” He acknowledged the ideal of collaboration but questioned its feasibility: “I subscribe to it in principle, but I don’t know to what extent this call for collective engagement would be successful in practice.”
Haller highlighted the need for unity, stating, “This is a collective statement of the discipline, which gives also unity." He hoped the charter would provide a foundation to reduce vulnerabilities within the discipline.
Broadening Anthropology’s Impact
The roundtable addressed the tension between anthropology’s internal struggles and its external relevance. Calvao emphasized anthropology's potential to address “hegemonic power and planetary injustices.” Similarly, Khamsy argued that the charter’s principles must translate into practical tools for anthropologists, enabling them to navigate structural inequalities and engage meaningfully with society.
Some Conclusions
The Ascona Charter represents a bold vision for anthropology, yet its success depends on bridging the gap between its ideals and the practical realities faced by anthropologists. The contributions of Tobias Haller, Nina Khamsy, and Filipe Calvao illuminate key challenges: from addressing precarity and embracing collective responsibility to maintaining the discipline’s critical voice in confronting global crises. By operationalizing the charter’s values, we can reclaim anthropology's relevance and contribute meaningfully to addressing the triple planetary crisis.
During the discussion attendees gave feedback and asked questions:
Who is the audience of the Charter?
Peter Larsen stressed that it is for multiple audiences, particularly for institutional settings. The hope would be for departments to set out actions informed by the charter. He drew particular attention to ways of conducting slow science, and getting out of the 'rat race' driven by neoliberal imperatives. He asked the question of how we can collectively find a way out, or at the very least deliberate collectively in our respective institutions? Roberta Colombo emphasized the Ascona Charter’s dual function as both an internal and external communication tool. She highlighted its potential to strengthen solidarity within anthropology while also engaging broader audiences.
Internal and External Communication
Roberta Colombo likened the charter’s audience to the dual focus of Aboriginal paintings, which she described as “speaking to the Aboriginal but also to the market.” In her view, the charter similarly addresses anthropologists themselves while aiming to communicate anthropology’s relevance to external stakeholders. She argued that this dual purpose must be made more explicit, suggesting that the next steps include actively fostering solidarity among anthropologists while articulating the discipline's broader societal impact in museums.
Drawing from her own experience in ethnographic museums, Roberta pointed out a stark reality: “ In Switzerland, in ethnographic museums, there is almost no more space for anthropologists.” This observation reflects a troubling trend of anthropology being marginalized in spaces that were once its stronghold. Roberta called for anthropologists to address such exclusions head-on by speaking out more openly and forcefully about the discipline’s relevance in cultural and institutional contexts .
Advocacy
Roberta also stressed the importance of using the charter as a platform for advocacy, urging anthropologists to be “braver” in addressing the structural challenges they face. She proposed organizing discussions—such as a roundtables focusing on for example "Who cares for Anthropology?' —to ensure the charter actively addresses anthropologists’ needs while simultaneously advocating for the discipline's broader societal value .
For the charter to balance its dual roles effectively it must serve as a unifying statement for the discipline while also pushing boundaries to engage with audiences beyond academia. This approach aligns with her broader call for transparency and active engagement in challenging anthropology’s diminishing visibility.
Feedback was also given on the wording of particular sections of the Ascona Charter.
Members of the Anthropology of Education Commission have offered to run a day long workshop to use the Ascona Charter to explore how we teach anthropology.
Ascona Reflection and Visioning Meeting
A weekend at the end of September 2024 at the Centro Incontri Umani Ascona was an opportunity to celebrate the history of the interface commission, express gratitude for the committed work of Peter Larsen and Doris Bacalzo, create an artistic timeline of Interface’s five year history and start to generate a vision of our intentions, hopes and plans for the future. We cooked for each other, went for walks and had many opportunities for energizing informal conversations. All those on our email list were invited. The only possible weekend for us unfortunately coincided with the 50th Year Anniversary event of Incomindios and a ten year celebration of the Bern Ethnographic Mediaspace.
Attendees included Aeron O'Connor, Estella Carpi, Laura Stoffel, Lea Helfenstein, Susie Riva, Sarah Keller, Peter Larsen, Eda Elif Tibet and Mike Poltorak.
On the Saturday we mapped key moments in the development of the interface commission starting with Professor Ellen Hertz' initial request to Peter Larsen to revive a then dormant commission (We would be very grateful for any information about the former history of the Interface commission).
Tapestry of Interface Past, Present and Future
Interface and Ascona Charter Futures
On the Sunday a walk to Monte Verita provided an opportunity for blue skies thinking and visioning. Given the fascinating history of Monte Verita as a 19th century retreat for people seeking an alternative life with more co-operation and political engagement, it was a particularly appropriate place for our discussions.
One group created a list of opportunities and questions related to the Ascona Charter :
1. Continuing Education -potentially through online training courses (eg Coursera)
2. Facilitator based training based on the Ascona Charter
3. Research Ethics Permission-how might the Ascona Charter contribute?
4. Large Research Project Protocols—How could the Ascona Charter address collaborative and other challenges faced by precarious researchers in projects: eg rights of researchers to data for publication.
5. How could the Ascona Charter engage with EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion)?
6. Who will be the primary initial users ? Professors, students? How could we road test the charter?
7. Behavioral Politics in Academia—eg refereeing in journals, management inequities , gender challenges.
8. Who will sign up to the Charter? How do we encourage that process?
9. Are there resonances between World Cafe and the Ascona Charter?
How can the idea of the bridge (thank you Laura Stoffel) serve as a metaphor for better understanding of where we meet different audiences and stakeholders, where one side of the bridge represents expert knowledge and the other broadly, 'public' knowledge?
The second group were inspired by the Monte Verita tea house to vision the community aspects of the Interface commission. They 'steeped' on the idea of self organised and passionate working groups, encouraged by a strong mission statement, collective agreement and a members manifesto.
Eda Elif Tibet and I look forward to facilitating further conversations and feedback on the Ascona Charter.
Mike Poltorak
3 December 2024
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