World Council of Anthropological Associations

The World Council of Anthropological Associations (WCAA) is a network of national, regional and international associations that aims to promote worldwide communication and cooperation in anthropology.

Its primary objectives are:

to promote the discipline of anthropology in an international context
to promote cooperation and the sharing of information among world anthropologists
to promote jointly organized events of scientific debate, and
co-operation in research activities and dissemination of anthropological knowledge.

World Anthropological Union (WAU)

The WCAA and the IUAES have come together to form the World Anthropological Union (WAU), a single bicameral organisation within which the WCAA and the IUAES will retain their autonomy and distinctiveness as separate chambers. The Constitution of WAU here (PDF ) and the WAU Operational Guidelines and Rules here (PDF ) have been now been adopted, and these governance documents succeed the previous Constitutions of the WCAA and the IUAES. The WCAA has formally begun to function as one of the two constituent chambers of WAU.

6th Biennial WCAA meeting

The 6th Biennial Meeting of the World Council of Anthropological Associations was held at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), in Florianópolis, Brazil, from July 13 to 16, 2018, during the Congress of IUAES (http://www.iuaes2018.org/). Anthropologists representing 29 countries from around the world participated. The main topics discussed were the Global Survey of Anthropological Practice (GSAP) and Anthropological Education Outside the Universities (AEOU), where data from the researches conducted in the respective countries were presented. Also presented was the proposal of the American Anthropological Association to create a research repository in open acess and the demand for WAU to participate at the Open Anthropological Research Repository Advisory Board. During the meeting, UFSC students conducted video interviews with the delegates that will result in videos about the different national contexts and the social insertions of their anthropologies. The complete schedule of the Biennial Meeting is here.

The New Organizing Committee

At the 6th Biennial Meeting of the World Council of Anthropological Associations Chandana Mathur finished her term as chair of WCAA, position assumed by Carmen Rial, and Isaac Nyamongo who was elected Deputy Chair, for two years (2018-2020). Isaac Nyamongo and Soumendra Mohan Patnaik had completed their four-year term on the Organising Committee, and two other individuals were elected to replace them: Shao-hua Liu (Taiwan) and Peter-Jazzy Ezeh (Nigeria).

Thus, the new organizing committee is formed by:

Carmen Rial (Brasil) – Chair

Isaac Nyamongo (Kenya) – Deputy Chair

Michel Bouchard (Canadá) – Secretary

Helen Macdonald (South Africa) – Finance

Virginia R. Dominguez (USA) – Counselor member

Clara Saraiva (Portugal)

Peter-Jazzy Ezeh (Nigeria).

Sachiko Kubota (Japan)

Shao-hua Liu (Taiwan)

Gordon Mathews (Hong-Kong) – editor, Déjà Lu.

List of member associations attended and their representatives

AAA American Anthropological Association (Alex Barker)
AAI Anthropological Association of Ireland (Chandana Mathur)
AAS Australian Anthropological Society (Greg Acciaioli)
ABA Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (Lia Zanotta Macahado)
APA Associaçãõ Portuguesa de Antropologia (Clara Saraiva)
ASnA Anthropology Southern Africa (Helen Macdonald)
AUAS Uruguayan Association of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Lydia de Souza)
CAS Chinese Anthropological Society (Fan Ke)
CASA Czech Association for Social Anthropology (Zdenek Uherek)
CASCA Canadian Anthropology Society/La Société Canadienne d"Anthropologie (Michel Bouchard)
CEAS Colegio de Etnólogos y Antropólogos Sociales [Mexico] (Ricardo Fagoaga)
CGA Colegio de Graduados en Antropología de la República Argentina (Lia Ferrero)
EASA European Association of Social Anthropologists (Georgeta Stoica)
HKAS Hong Kong Anthropological Society (Gordon Mathews)
IAA Indian Anthropological Association (Nilika Mehrotra)
IMA Instituto Madrileño de Antropología (Antonio Cadierno Parodi)
IUAES International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (Faye Harrison)
InASEA International Association for Southeast European Anthropology (Vesna Vucinic)
JASCA Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology (Sachiko Kubota)
PAAA Pan African Anthropology Association (Peter-Jazzy Ezeh)
PTL Polskie Towarszystwo Ludoznawcze / Polish Ethnological Society (Łukasz Kaczmarek)
RAI Royal Anthropological Institute (Emma Ford)
SEAS Serbian Ethnological and Anthropological Society (Vesna Vucinic)
SIAC Società Italiana di Antropologia Culturale (Georgeta Stoica)
SIEF International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (Clara Saraiva)
SfAA Society for Applied Anthropology (Judith Friedenberg)
TSAE Taiwan Society for Anthropology and Ethnology (Shao-hua Liu)
UGAT Anthropological Association of the Philippines/Ugnayang Pang-Aghamtao,Inc. (Cynthia Zayas)
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Danilyn Rutherford)
OrgComm (Isaac Nyamongo)

WCAA delegates at the WCAA biennial meeting in Florianopolis, Brazil 2018

WCAA on Facebook

The World Council of Anthropological Associations has its own Facebook page. Please have a look, and please consider adding your own contribution. The manager of the WCAA Facebook page is Jermaine Gordon jrmngrdn(at)gmail.com, a graduate student in anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. If there is anything you would like to have posted related to world anthropology, please send it on to him.

Other key activities in line with the WCAA objectives are:

WCAA Task Forces

These are non-profit organizations and global networks of anthropologists:
WCAA Ethics Task force
WCAA Advocacy and Outreach Activities Task Force

WCAA Global Cultural Policies Task Force

WCAA membership

See which associations are members of the WCAA; or learn who is on the organising committee and who are the international delegates to the WCAA.

If your association is interested to join the WCAA, read further information here.

déjà lu Issue 7

The WCAA now publishes the sixth issue of Déjà Lu, the forum of anthropologica *best articles* from an array of anthropological journals across the globe: 47 articles in all, free for your reading pleasure. View the articles >>

En sus propios términos /
自分の言葉で

中華とイスラームのあいだ / Betwixt and Between: China and Islam by Masashi Nara A new Japanese piece In one’s own terms, the World Council of Anthropological Associations’s (WCAA) initiative is online!

The WCAA's twelfth newsletter is available for download here.

WCAA supports...

See all members’ submissions and letters of support for members’ associations here

and shares our sympathies on the 2nd anniversary of the murder of Giulio Regeni. Read our letter to the editor of La Repubblica, Italy in English and Italian here.

the protests against the US Travel Ban, read our statement in English and Spanish here

the efforts of the Central European University, Hungary, to continue their operations in Hungary unhindered. Read our statement to the Minister of Human Capacities here

and makes a statement of solidarity with the Polish Ethnological Society regarding discrimination here (the PES statement is here)

the academic freedom of ABA in Brazil. Read the letter to the Brazilian government here

efforts to release Homa Hoodfar from prison in Iran
Read the letter here

the ABA position on Guarani, in letter to Brazilian President. Read the letter here