Spring 1999, Volume 4(1)
By Arleen Garcia, Editor
It's hard to believe, but after a one year hiatus, the AGSA Newsletter is back in print (and hopefully for a long time to come).
You should notice a few changes
from previous issues. At the top left hand corner of this issue
you will find the AGSA logo for the year, the Nagamandala. It is
also prominently featured on our department T-shirts. If you
don't have one already, you can get one using the order form on
the back page.
In a special report, the new chair, Kevin Vaughn, and co-chair, Peter Paige, of AGSA run down all the new developments that have taken place. It's been an exciting and successful year!
As you may recall, I opened the subject matter of the newsletter up to a vote many months ago to determine whom our featured graduate students, faculty, and alumni would be. In this issue we see the first interview of many more to come. Sarah McClure gives us an intimate look at one of our own, John Kantner. The individual features will be much lengthier and cover our colleagues in greater detail. Additionally, we bring back the Notes From the Field feature. Anastasia Panagakos tell us about her experiences as a Design Anthropologist.
Finally, I hope everyone enjoys the new issue. I've enjoyed putting it together, learned a great deal in the process, and am happy to serve my colleagues while doing so. The next issue should be out in early summer.
By Kevin Vaughn and Peter Paige
It has been our pleasure to serve as AGSA chair and co-chair in what has been another excellent year for the AGSA. It has been our goal to create an open forum for the discussion of graduate student issues and interests, as well as serve as liaisons between grads and the faculty and staff. We could not have accomplished anything this year without the hard work of our officers and the participation of AGSA members. Through everyone's participation we have had a banner year in T-shirt production, obtaining donations, and organizing events like the poster session, a departmental discussion of graduate funding issues, and a number of other activities. In addition, we have succeeded in resurrecting the AGSA Newsletter through the efforts of our editors Arleen Garcia and Sarah McClure. Thank you one and all.We are proud to report that this year's T-shirt sales have been a major success and probably our most successful T-shirt drive ever. Sporting a Nagamandala design from the state of Kerala, India, we have sold over 180 T-shirts to date. This is the first year we have offered both long and short-sleeved shirts (now we can be in departmental duds year round!). In March, we even had to place a reorder (our second so far!) of T-shirts in order to keep up with the current demand. Kudos to Liz Klarich, our Graphics Officer, for the wonderful job in designing the T-shirt and busting her butt to get them ordered in time for the holiday season, and her excellent tracking of T-shirt sales since the get-go. We still have T-shirts left so be sure to check out the order form included in the newsletter.One of the primary tasks that AGSA has had since its inception has been to keep the Communications Center (HSSB 2045) up and running. Recently, we have been the recipients of several very generous donations from graduate students and Humanities and Social Sciences Computing (HSSC) facility. First year sociocultural graduate student Nina Brown and her husband Stephen Tydings generously donated a Pentium II, 300 MHz computer with 64 megabytes of RAM, an 8 gigabyte hard drive, a 32x CD ROM drive, an internal zip drive, a sound card, a network card, and a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows 98 and Office 97! This was a huge gift to AGSA, and the PC addition ill make our Communications Center even more accessible to everyone. Thank you Nina and Stephen for the donation! Joan Murdoch, director of the HSSC kindly loaned us a 15 inch monitor and a laser printer for our use as well.In addition, Judy Harris, a long time fan of the anthropology graduate students (her daughter Susan is one) of the Office of Admissions donated a 10-cup Krups coffee pot for our use in the Communications Center. AGSA thanks Judy for the donation! Finally, archaeology graduate student Cassandra Hensher and her husband, John Sharp, donated a microwave over so that grad students can warm their food on the weekends and evenings. AGSA thanks Cassandra and John!Graduate student Nico Tripcevich, our assistant Graphics Officer, and Craig Kaminsky have generously donated their time to keep the computers in the Communications Center up and running. Both have agreed to the formidable task of making sure that the computers are operating smoothly. Nico is the Macintosh wizard and Craig is the PC genius. AGSA appreciates their efforts!In other AGSA news, during the Fall Quarter we worked with Francesca Bray, then our graduate advisor, to organize a department wide discussion of graduate student funding issues. At the meeting, faculty and staff answered questions to help clarify university and departmental policies on graduate support and there was a general discussion on how to improve current funding methods. The meeting had a large turn out of both faculty and grads from all subdisciplines.What is in store for the AGSA? At press time, we will be having representatives from all subdisciplines participate in the Ventura County Science Fair/Career Day on Wednesday, April 21st. Last year, our former AGSA chair, Justin Jennings, along with Corina Kellner, John Ziker, and Peter Paige represented our department in informing students from the 5th through the 12 grades about anthropology, what we do as anthropologists and careers in anthropology. We hope to have a similar turn out this year. Career Day promises to be a great tradition for graduate students in anthropology to participate in.Also coming up around press time is the Second Annual Poster Session on Friday, May 21st. The poster session was initiated last year in order to foster communication between the sub-disciplines and to provide an opportunity for graduate students to present current research in a graphic format. Last year's was a huge success, and Corina Kellner, Susan Harris and Michele Buzon, the organizers are working hard to make this one a success too! This is another great AGSA tradition that we hope to continue.Finally, Justin Jennings and Claudia Rumold have agreed to be the coordinators of what we hope to be an AGSA sponsored, annual end-of-the-year social event. Stay tuned to hear more about this later in the quarter.Remember, above all else, the AGSA functions only when we have participation from all graduate students. This means you! Your officers could always use a helping hand when putting together AGSA sponsored events, the newsletter, and anything else that involves time and energy.We are always open to new ideas and suggestions. AGSA is what we make it and having lots of people actively involved ultimately leads to more benefits for everyone!Thanks for a great year!
By Anastasia PanagakosThree years ago, when I began graduate studies in anthropology, I was out of work and without funding. Needing a paycheck, and interested in finding something more stimulating than making cappuccinos at Starbucks, I scoured want ads, temp agencies and campus postings looking for a decent job. I say "decent" meaning something remotely stimulating outside of anthropology because I was fairly certain a job in anthropology would not come my way until I had my Ph.D., several articles and a book contract in hand. Things did not look so good.By Winter Quarter I was still jobless, penniless and feeling rather hopeless. Just as Starbucks was beginning to look tempting, I came across an e-mail posted to all anthropology grad students. The message as a help-wanted ad from Mark Dawson, an anthropologist, ho worked for Hauser, an industrial design company interested in hiring another anthropologist to join his research team. Not only was the work in anthropology (although I had no idea what industrial design was) but the pay was good. I called that very day and was invited to interview at Hauser. Needless to say, I got the job.For the next year, I would work off and on with the research team on various projects. I say off and on because Hauser would bid against other industrial design houses for projects and whoever could do the work the cheapest (and still remain within the law) would win.Mark and I were the only two social scientists on the team, the rest were design and marketing people. Hauser's specialty was in high-tech hardware design. For example, one project I worked on was for a computer manufacturer (who will remain nameless because I am sworn to secrecy) who wanted to upgrade the design of their laptop computers. Particularly, they wanted to know where the best place to put speakers was, should they use a track-ball or track-pad mouse, and would people sacrifice more options for a heavier computer (a big concern when you have to lug it around on your shoulder).We conducted focus group interviews among business folks who travel and people who buy computers for their companies in both New York and Los Angeles. I didn't do anything so glamorous as go to New York. My job was to transcribe the videotaped sessions, do the analysis and report back. Usually this was done in my apartment with my pajamas on after having spent a day at school being a grad student. Funny, it didn't feel very anthropological.My first project with Hauser, however, was certainly more in tune with ethnography, although in a very capitalistic kind of way. A certain manufacturer of video game systems hired us to change the configuration, color and style of the controllers one uses to operate the games. No, we weren't working on the Sony Playstation. But if you can picture the controllers for that system you will know what I'm talking about. Our task was to interview "game experts" (usually twelve year old boys who should go outside and play) on which video game systems they like, which controllers they prefer, where the buttons should be, etc.We actually would go to the people's homes and observe them playing video games. In addition, we would observe where and how they spatially set the gaming system up (Was it in a bedroom or family room? Was it neatly stored away or were all the cords tangled up?) These are the questions a design anthropologist asks. We conducted interviews in both Los Angeles and Japan. No, I didn't get to go to Japan either. Again, my job was as the voyeuristic interpreter in fuzzy slippers--I watched tapes of ethnographic interviews, made notes and comments, and then reported back.Such is the nature of the design anthropologist. While my job was not the most exciting, I did become more aware of the differences between how design anthropologists and academic anthropologists conduct field research and the methods they choose to use. The biggest limitation for design anthropologists is the time crunch. Unable to spend years in the field, projects typically last one or two months. This is especially true for Hauser since the high tech industry has an incredibly high turn over rate (think about your own obsolete computer that's a year old!) Consulting with individual informants is rare and most interviews are conducted as focus groups.The most profound difference I detected was that the anthropologist never worked alone. Unlike most academic anthropologists who still conduct the majority of their fieldwork alone, design anthropologists are just a part of a multidisciplinary team that can include cognitive psychologists, marketing execs, technology wizards, and graphic artists. Projects are highly collaborative and involve knowledge from a diversity of fields. During research meetings, in which each of us would present our findings, I realized that a qualitative approach was something very new to industrial design. In the past five years, companies like Hauser and Intel have hired social scientists and expanded their research programs. While industrial design may not odder the same theoretical complexities as the academy, it is an opportunity to apply some of our ivory tower knowledge to real world situations. Besides, sometimes you can wear your fuzzy slippers to work.
By Sarah McClure, Asst. EditorJohn was born in San Francisco on April 10, 1967 to a 16 year old mother who gave him up for adoption a few months later. The first years of his life were spent near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. After living in a cabin in the woods in Maine and on the Outer Banks, where John attended a one-room schoolhouse, his family settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1974.John graduated from high school in 1985 and then attended Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where he could pursue a wide range of outdoor activities as well as his interest in biology. In fact, he was planning to major in biology until he took his first anthropology class: Physical Anthropology with Mike Hoffman. He was hooked. Based on his personal experience, he was especially interested in how individuals are shaped by culture in conjunction with and as opposed to genetics. Anthropology turned out to be the discipline that allowed him to explore the nature vs. nurture dichotomy while spending time in the great outdoors.He spent his junior year in Costa Rica doing mostly survey work in the mountain valleys below Cerro Chirripo. His love for the Southwest and interest in anthropology naturally resulted in fieldwork in Santa Fe and environs. Experiences included ethnohistoric archival and field work for his Senior Honors Thesis, contract jobs at Pueblo sites, and teaching field schools at historic and prehistoric sites. After graduating in 1989, John worked as a departmental assistant for two years, organizing and assisting in field classes and in the classroom.He came to UCSB in the fall of 1991. A little overwhelmed by the chaos of graduate school, support was granted by his cohort of other first years and Barbara Voorhies. Her seminar, the Origins of Agriculture, was probably the most influential of his graduate career and Barbara continued motivating him through the tumultuous first years.Theoretically, John was most influenced by "the big men" of the department: John Patton, Herb Mashner, and Wayne Allen were all very opinionated and outspoken students further along in the program, who used to gather at the old pub and discuss theory with anyone who came. John would carefully listen to the discussions, evaluating the arguments and forming his own theoretical framework. It is from these discussions and his fundamental interest in nurture/nature that his Neo-Darwinian approach emerged.He wanted to focus his research on Southwestern prehistory, so his MA thesis was on political competition among the Chaco Anasazi of the Southern San Juan Basin (1994) and his dissertation is entitled The Influence of Cooperative and Competitive Behavior on the Development of the Chaco Anasazi in the Southwestern United States. His research primarily analyzes how cooperative and competitive behaviors stimulate increased sociopolitical complexity.The list of projects, papers, articles, awards and honors is impressive and exceeds the scope of this article. You can find out more about him and his research at his Web page (http://sipapu.ucsb.edu/john/)At the time of this printing, John has completed his doctoral dissertation and is teaching a class at Colorado College as a visiting professor. We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate him on his achievement and wish he and his wife Chris all the best for their future endeavors. Way to go, John!
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