About ASA

The ASA offers a number of benefits to members, including receipt of the annual ASA monograph, reduced fees for the increasingly popular annual conference, access to the directory of members and to the annals of the ASA. The ASA publishes and maintains the discipline’s Ethical Guidelines, which are increasingly used as a model for other associations and other disciplines. The ASA also supports its networks: Apply, Anthropology of Britain, the postgraduate network and Anthropology Matters, as well as supporting members who wish to set up new networks. The ASA also manages the Firth Fund and the Radcliffe Brown Fund, which offer assistance to students writing-up their PhD. It offers a limited number of occasional bursaries (such as a student bursary for travel to ASA08), and occasional small grants to support workshops and conferences by ASA members and networks.

The ASA represents its members in a wide range of consultations and campaigns, and also represents individual members when this is necessary. Recent activities include the ESRC’s benchmarking exercise, campaigning for better distribution of doctoral studentships, coordinating cross-disciplinary objections to unethical research programmes, representing the discipline to the Higher Education Funding Councils and responding to consultations from the British Academy and other agencies.

The ASA also aims to promote Anthropology, complementing the activities of the RAI, through its own publications, recently reinvigorated through the addition of blogs, film-site and online journal .

Objectives

The ASA was founded in 1946 with the following objectives:

  • To promote the study and teaching of social anthropology
  • To hold periodical meetings
  • To present the interests of social anthropology and to maintain its professional status
  • To assist in any way possible in planning research.
  • To collate, and if possible, publish information on social anthropology, and a register of social anthropologists.

Short history of the ASA

Click here to read a history written by Dr David Mills.

The founder members were Radcliffe-Brown as President, Evans-Pritchard as Chair, and Raymond Firth as Secretary. Since then, the Presidents have been Evans-Pritchard (1967-73) and Professor Sir Raymond Firth (1973 to 2002). Dame Marilyn Strathern was elected Honorary Life President in 2008.

Chairs have been I. Schapera, R.W. Firth, Max Gluckman, Edmund Leach, Meyer Fortes, Jean La Fontaine, A.L. Epstein, Edwin Ardener, Peter Riviere, David Parkin, Sandra Wallman, Pat Caplan, and Richard Fardon.

Methodology

  1. We hold an annual conference, usually in the spring. Annual conferences may be hosted by institutions in the UK or other Commonwealth Countries. Every ten years, we hold a Decennial conference, which attracts a large international audience.
  2. We publish at least one monograph from the conference papers.
  3. We publish the Annals of the ASA each year, which includes a Guide to University Departments in the UK and the Commonwealth, and an Annual Report on each of the UK Departments; and in alternate years, a Directory of Members, including Associate Members (postgraduates)
  4. We publish, and regularly review, Ethical Guidelines for Good Research Practice in Social Anthropology.
  5.  We are the main professional association dealing with governmental and funding agencies such as the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
  6. We also represent individual member interests and this is occasionally significant.
  7. We promote the informed and responsible use of anthropological knowledge in addressing national and global issues in the public domain by responding directly or by referring enquiries to appropriate individual specialists as appropriate.
  8. We collaborate on coverage with Anthropology Today, the newsletter of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
  9. In appropriate contexts, we cooperate with other anthropological organisations in based in the UK, such as the Royal Anthropological Institute, and C-Sap, the UK National Centre for learning and teaching Sociology, Anthropology and Politics, and with other national and international associations, such as the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). The ASA is a member of the World Council of Anthropological Associations.
  10. We have a commitment to support networks such as Postgraduate Network, Apply, Anthropology of Britain.

Committee

The current officers of the Association can be seen on the Contacts page.

To read a list of those who have held office within the Association, click here.

To read the specific roles allocated to committee members, click here.

To read the Rules of procedure for the Association, click here.

Minutes of previous AGMs (pdfs)

AGM2009 draft; AGM2008; AGM 2007; AGM 2006; AGM2005; ABM2004; ABM 2003; ABM 2002; ABM 2001; ABM 2000

Info for committee members

Next meeting: 20th November, 1-5pm G.033 (Ground Floor Arthur Lewis Building) University of Manchester. Full set of papers.

Previous minutes (passworded PDFs): Jun09, Mar09, Dec08, Nov08, May08, Mar 08, Feb 08 , Nov 07, Mar 07, Nov 06, May 06, April 06, Nov 05, June 05, March 05, Nov 04, June04

If you have forgotten the committee password email the administrator on admin(at)theasa.org.