Welcome to the new website of the Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW)!

As the incoming president of SAW, I am incredibly excited about the new directions we are taking as a society. SAW’s most recent project is this revamped website, which was built using the community-based publishing platform PubPub. In addition to promoting a more dynamic online presence for our section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), the site also hosts a new short-form web publication, which seeks to combine the accessibility of blog-style content with the option of open peer review.

We are calling this forum Exertions to index the myriad ways that work makes and shapes our lives. The first piece to be published in Exertions is a photo essay by Andrew Gilbert and Haris Husarić, which both documents new forms of worker publicity in postsocialist Bosnia and Herzegovina and responds to the erasures that these forms have highlighted. Do check it out, and consider submitting fieldwork vignettes, theoretical provocations, or works of public scholarship to appear in this space; SAW’s digital editor, Marcel LaFlamme (Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft) is ready to think with you about what this platform can afford.

In addition to the relaunch of our website, the section has dedicated itself to supporting adjunct and precarious scholars. During the spring of 2019, SAW’s outgoing treasurer Ilana Gershon (Indiana University) facilitated a survey of hiring practices in anthropology departments. At the 2019 annual meeting of the AAA in Vancouver, Ilana will be presenting the results of the survey to university-level leadership. Looking ahead, we hope to harness SAW’s collective energy not only to bring greater attention to adjunct issues but also to highlight ways of altering hiring and recruitment practices to reflect the realities of the academic job market in our discipline.

Our peer-reviewed journal, the Anthropology of Work Review, will celebrate its fortieth anniversary in 2020 under the guidance of our editorial collective, Kathleen Millar (Simon Fraser University), Josh Fisher (Western Washington University), and Alex Nading (Cornell University). The journal is getting great new submissions, and the editors encourage scholars at all career stages to submit manuscripts and/or special issue ideas. (As a shameless plug, I would add that my most cited article was published in AWR. The journal has excellent disciplinary and interdisciplinary reach!) You can contact the editors at awr.editors@gmail.com with any questions. 

I am looking forward to my three-year tenure as president of SAW. This is an important time to study questions of work in the global economy, as evidenced by the fact that SAW’s membership numbers are growing. If you are interested in the section and our activities, please reach out to me or any of our other board members about how you can get involved.