Conference Agenda

The idea, and existence, of sex work has, for centuries, been a source of debate in the United States and beyond. The debate surrounding sex work is often framed through opposing views. On one side, those who are pro–sex work argue that it enables agency, autonomy, and economic freedom, and that it should be recognized as a form of labor (Nagle 1997). On the other hand, critics contend that sex work is oppressive, devaluing, and inherently immoral (Dworkin 1987). The goal of this research is not to resolve these debates or propose a compromise, but rather to represent each side and examine what exists within the space of this tension itself. This research seeks to answer the question: What makes sex work such a morally and politically irresolvable issue, and why does it continue to provoke such polarized responses? It will be grounded in a close reading of feminist literature on competing views of sex work and the female body.

Indigenous Maya women have passed down knowledge and techniques of back-strap weaving for millennia; recently, fashion designers from the developed world have attempted to claim intellectual property rights that include Maya women’s traditional designs and weaving patterns. Instead of allowing for the theft of their traditional knowledge, indigenous women in Guatemala have come together across 22 Maya ethnolinguistic groups to challenge fashion designers’ attempts through the legal system, basing their claims in intellectual property rights. This research questions how and why marginalized women resist governmentality through legal frameworks and language. The project interrogates how collective, communal work could produce new epistemological understandings of international legal frameworks, which were originally created to support corporate capital accumulation. The work is based on long-term fieldwork, including participant-observation, interviews, focus groups, and image collection, in collaboration with AFEDES, the Asociación Feminil del Desarollo de Sacatepéquez (Feminist Development Organization of Sacatepequez) and Indigenous weavers in highland Guatemala.

This paper examines multiple claims made for the invention of the fufu machine, a cooking appliance designed to aid the preparation of fufu. Though it was first popularized in the 2010s, attempts to design a machine that would pound fufu have existed since the 1960s. Scholarship in technology studies has argued against the centrality of invention, demonstrating the greater relative significance of technological use. And yet, claims to invention remain socially significant. In this talk, I offer an ethnographic investigation of the question, “Who invented the fufu machine?” Examining the ways that this question has been posed and answered by journalists, engineers, metalworkers, and users suggest diverging renditions of innovation and its political effects. The fufu machine has been imbued with moral narratives of modernization, themselves embraced by state agencies that govern food, which link convenience to normative models of society and the family. At the same time, the fufu machine is also situated in urban economic networks that offer different interpretations of its political, economic, and cultural affordances. Claims regarding the invention of the fufu machine therefore represent diverging visions of urban Ghanaian technopolitics of food.

Kogin-zashi and hishi-zashi are embroidery styles that originated in the respective Tsugaru and Nanbu regions of present-day Aomori Prefecture during the Edo period. Once used by farmers in feudal Japan to reinforce thin garments in one of the world’s snowiest regions, they are now decorative art forms adorning kimono, tapestries, and everyday household items. In this paper, I will trace the history of these regional crafts, from their necessary original purpose, to their perceived death and eventual rebirth after the industrialization of Japan and the subsequent Mingei (folk crafts) Movement of the 1920s, and, finally, to the modern day, where I will explore their status as cultural commodities in a rural setting. Building on the works of past and contemporary scholars of rural Japanese sociology, I argue that in the twenty-first century, kogin-zashi and hishi-zashi have become both inter- and intra-regional tourist draws to Aomori Prefecture. Their commercial viability not only keeps these traditional crafts alive, but also revitalizes the rural towns in which they were created. The study of kogin- and hishi-zashi illuminates the role of folk arts in global capitalist economies, speaking to an important, yet understudied, facet of our current economic condition. Through knick-knacks sold at gift shops around the prefecture, premade kits at every craft store, classes for tourists and locals alike, kogin-focused magazines and annual festivals, and even a considerably large online presence, spanning social media platforms, blogs, and websites in Japanese, English, and beyond, kogin-zashi and hishi-zashi link a dedicated network of historians, designers, and fiber artists who continue the craft in the modern day, throughout Japan and around the world.

This paper examines how factory demand, social expectations, and state population control ideologies and programs converge to shape contraceptive use and pregnancy decisions among rural garment workers in Bangladesh. Amid the rural expansion of Bangladesh’s garment industry, female factory workers of the villages navigate reproductive lives structured not by migration to urban slums, but by daily commutes from their natal and marital rural communities to participate in wage labor. Here, factories function not only as sites of production but also as institutions that monitor, discipline, and indirectly regulate workers’ reproductive timing through employment insecurity, maternity benefit policies, and informal pressures. Simultaneously, kinship networks, religious values, patriarchal expectations, and state policies regulating maternity and population influence women’s decisions to adopt contraceptives and conceive, continue, or conceal pregnancies. Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in four villages of the Trishal sub-district of northern Bangladesh, including participant observation and in-depth interviews with women employed in both compliance and noncompliance factories, I argue that reproductive decision-making is fundamentally organized around the precarity of factory employment, family pressures and support, and state-driven reproductive policies.

We recognize that acts of collaboration, cooperation, and connections are what enable our scholarship to have profound and penetrating meanings. But the relationships we build through such acts can make us question the scientific legitimacy of our own work. Is there a space within anthropological scholarship to talk about deep emotional experiences such as care giving as an ethnographic research methodology? Two anthropologists reflect on their ongoing ethnographic research projects and how their emotional experiences have become foundational and necessary to their research practices. Sharing examples from their research, they invite a dialogue on how acts of care both enrich and set limitations on data collection, interpretation, and dissemination. While the acts of care provided as examples occurred during fieldwork, the dialogue being raised encourages exploring the role of care more broadly as a focus. For example, considering how emotional experience can not only shape our research activities with subjects but also our interactions with other scholars. Our closeness to our field sites and our intimate relationships with our research subjects are the heart of our work. Yet we question our own work’s scientific rigor when the relationships we build necessitate that our actions do not directly correspond with recognized data collection methods such as interviews or participant observation. The very same things that cause us to question the validity of our research activities are also our greatest strengths and what brings power and depth to our work. But there seems to be no space in our discipline to talk about this. Navigating cultural climates that seem to grow increasingly divisive and injurious with every day, using emotional experience as a framework to approaching research relationships and writing suggests ways in which anthropologists and the communities they represent can work together to create a more humanistic world.

Archaeological research taking place at a Shepherd’s Cottage in Saratoga Springs, NY provides valuable insight into the lives of those who are often forgotten: the working class. This research is the culmination of years of archaeological fieldwork by Skidmore College students beginning in 2021. The analysis of glass found at the site revealed the remains of a medicine bottle, indicating that it was becoming less expensive, as well as an early fruit jar, indicating a desire to preserve food. These glass remains allow us to gain insight into what life would have looked like for the working class in the 1800s, as well as how life was beginning to change. These changes are evidenced by a newfound accessibility to medicine, as well as the development and usage of new technologies to assist with preservation of valuable food resources during shorter farming seasons and longer winters.