'Ritual and Reflection: Tropes in Transformation and Transgression'
August 28-29, 2008, Lubljana, Slovenia
Organizers: Jens Kreinath (Wichita State University) and Fefika Sariönder (University of Bielefeld)

The workshop was held during the 2008 meetings of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Its attempt was to overcome the dichotomy of thought and action ubiquitous to ritual theory.

Preliminary abstract: Articulating the interrelationships between food storage, economic decision-making, and community organization represents one of the greatest challenges in understanding the global emergence of social differentiation. The ability to manipulate food, both wild and domestic, and to regularly overcome the seasonal schedule, through good years and bad, is a critical foundation for the emergence of status differences.

Preliminary abstract: As members of a research partnership between the Smithsonian Institution and the George Washington University, we are requesting $20,000 to organize, host and publish the results of a workshop on the Linguistic and Material Intimacies of Mobile Phones. This workshop builds on and integrates emerging but distinct literatures on the social, cultural, linguistic, and material aspects of mobile phones (Horst & Miller 2006; Ito et. al. 2005; Katz 2008).

Preliminary abstract: The workshop addresses the need for review and assessment of the framework of interdisciplinary population studies. Limits to prevailing postwar paradigms like the Evolutionary Synthesis and Demographic Transition were becoming evident by the 1970s. Subsequent decades have witnessed an immense expansion of population modelling and related empirical inquiry, with new genetic developments that have reshaped evolutionary, population, and developmental biology.

World Council of Anthropological Associations Plenary
July 10-13, 2008, Osaka, Japan
Organizer: Junji Koizumi (Osaka University)

This was the second plenary meeting of the World Council of Anthropological Associations (WCAA, founded in 2004 in Recife, Brazil) and its objectives were to discuss anthropologies’ role in the modern world, to strengthen the cooperative activities among anthropological associations, and to develop strategies for making anthropology more relevant.

Preliminary abstract: We propose to convene a workshop of experts conducting research on the evolution of diet and feeding behavior among hominins of the African Plio-Pleistocene. The recent development of rich sets of dietary isotope data, comprehensive sampling of primate occlusal microwear, and newly emerging experimental approaches bearing on the interpretation of craniofacial functional anatomy has created a strongly partitioned perspective on early hominin feeding behavior characterized by different questions, methodologies, and scales of temporal and spatial resolution.

'Beyond Interactivity: Applying Dynamic Systems Theory to the Study of Great Apes and Humans,' April 15-18, 2004, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia -- Organizer: Barbara J. King (College of William and Mary). This workshop brought together eight anthropologists and psychologists who study the social behavior of primates using dynamic-systems theory (DST). Participants shared an interest in studying social behavior, cognition, and communication by looking at dyads, triads, and groups as systems of internally related parts.