Summary
Anthropology and Contemporary Immigration
This academic year's first Advanced
Seminar, "Anthropology and Contemporary Immigration," took
place October 7-11, 2001. Chaired by Nancy Foner, the seminar included
ten scholars representing cultural, social, urban, medical, psychological,
and feminist anthropology. Describing immigration as one of the
most pressing contemporary social issues in the United States,
Foner stressed the seminar's focus on evaluating the unique role
of anthropology in the emerging interdisciplinary field of immigrant
studies.
The mass influx of immigrants into the United States
since the elimination of quotas in 1965 has led to "dramatic transformations
in American society," Foner stated, citing the importance of core anthropological
methods such as ethnographic research in documenting the subtleties of changing
cultural and social patterns. "Who better than anthropologists to determine
how immigration is changing American culture?" reflected Foner at the colloquium
presented to SAR mid-way through the seminar week.
The increasing phenomenon of the controversial category
of "transnationals" sparked particularly challenging discussions as
participants considered the experiences of immigrants who maintain "multi-stranded
connections and associations" with their home countries.
Eight main themes emerged from the intense discussions:
transnationalism, cultural invention and negotiation, cultural relativism, second
generation, gender, city-as-context, medical anthropology and health policy,
and research methods. The general goals of the seminar were to evaluate anthropology's
theoretical and methodological approaches to immigration studies, to consider
how these are influenced by—and in
turn influence—research in other social
science disciplines, and to chart an agenda for future research.
