Anthropology of Technology Prize Announcement

ANTHROPOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY PRIZE

Background

Starting in Fall 2001, the UCSB Department of Anthropology started a program to award prizes for outstanding papers on the anthropology of technology published by its graduate students. The prize fund of $10,000 was established in 2000 ($5,000 donated by Francesca Bray, Anthropology Professor Emerita, $5,000 by the Dean of Graduate Affairs), and the Department will make awards until the funds run out.

Submissions from students in all three wings of our graduate program are encouraged, and papers taking any anthropological perspective on technology will be considered. At the time of submission the paper must be published, or have been accepted for publication, in an academic journal or edited collection. Papers published more than eighteen months before the deadline will not be considered.

9 November 2001 Announcement

The Anthropology of Technology Prize Committee for 2001 consisted of Georgia Fox (Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Curator of the Museum of Anthropology, California State University at Chico. Dr Fox is a marine archaeologist interested in the social and cultural dimensions of material culture; her research has included the analysis of sites from early Mediterranean societies and colonial Caribbean societies); Karl Hutterer (Director, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History) He has written extensively on both archaeological and cultural anthropological issues in Southeast and East Asia; his fieldwork has been conducted principally in the Philippines; and Michael Osborne (Associate Professor, UCSB Departments of History and Environmental Studies). Dr. Osborne is an expert on science, technology and medicine in the context of colonialism and imperialism..

The committee members have now discussed the submissions. They were impressed by the quality of all the papers submitted, and by the range of issues they addressed; they have selected the two following papers as the prizewinners:

Robert Fletcher, "What are we fighting for? Rethinking resistance in a Pewenche community in Chile", Journal of Peasant Studies 28, 3 (April 2001): 37-66.
The committee's commendation reads: "Resistance or opposition to development policy often crystallizes around technical projects. Here Fletcher analyzes indigenous reactions to the construction of a major dam in Chile, and in the process offers a lucid, elegantly argued, and enlivening critical perspective on resistance theory."
Justin Jennings and Nathan Craig, "Polity wide analysis and imperial political economy: the relationship between valley political complexity and administrative centers in the Wari Empire of the Central Andes", accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
"While the case study here is the prehistoric Wari empire of the Central Andes, the application of GIS explored by Jennings and Craig has potential for broader applicability in the archaeological analysis of complex societies. The approach invites further thoughts about the epistemological issues surrounding the use of GIS analysis."

Each prize is worth $750. Congratulations to Rob, Justin and Nathan.

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