Keywords:
World Anthropologies, WCAA, anthropological associations, diverse anthropological perspectives, confronting challenges
Abstract:
The WCAA was created in Brazil in 2004 with the participation of representatives from fourteen anthropological associations, namely seven representing specific countries (Australia, Brazil, France, Great Britain, India, Japan and the United States), four regional associations (Anthropology Southern Africa, the European Association of Social Anthropologists, the Latin American Anthropological Association, and the Pan-African Association of Anthropologists) and the global International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Over the twenty years since then, the number of WCAA member associations has progressively increased, reaching almost sixty in 2024. Established at different historical moments, these associations of various types represent anthropologists living and working in specific countries or regions of the world and diverse geopolitical positions. While the WCAA has developed multiple activities to address the interests of its growing membership and those of a wider audience too, the WCAA still faces the challenge of expanding member associations’ knowledge about each other and about the wide range of associations’ activities and concerns. That in turn creates challenges for promoting dialogues, joint actions and social solidarity among WCAA members and for effectively establishing a true community of anthropologists that is global and plural. This panel aims to bring together representatives of both older and newer WCAA member associations, including some who attended the 2004 meeting. The goal is to reveal and ultimately compare their various perspectives and practices in their specific environment and, from that viewpoint, to discuss whatever crucial issues the various associations have confronted in the past and the present, as well as their future plans. The intention is to draw on these diverse testimonies to help the WCAA as a collective to understand how collaboratively to confront the urgent issues of our times facing anthropology and anthropologists around the world.