Thanks, Anne for raising the issue, and Matan for suggesting the task
force. I would gladly join.

I am aware the question has been raised in the past by adjunct faculty
members at American universities, but not sure to what result. It did not
affect foreign favulculty, however, I believe... But does anyone involved
remember/ can comment?

As a Bulgarian early career anthropologist and before I got a job in "the
West" I have used the non-membership option for a few meetings in order to
attend without paying high membership fee (but the conference fee, overseas
flights, hotel nights, subsistence because food is not provided etc) is
still prohibitive, and I was lucky to have a fellowship which most PhDs
these days dont have. Plus, opting out of membership one cannot participate
in votes or even enter the members forum and raise the issue, so its a
vicious circle...

Asecond issue,I have rarely seen other Bulgarian and further "second speed
Europe" (I am using this with irony) anthropologists at AAA conferences,
unless they are also working at Western universities. This is also
detrimental to the development of the discipline in countries like my one,
where the only anthropology major has recently closed and there is little
encouragement of the handful of traditional ethnology departments to engage
with the broader discipline on international level. Respectively people
with degrees from foreign universities like myself and many other
colleagues end up being foreigners in their home country/academy. We are
never recruited at these departments or even invited to give talks, making
the students and academics at Bulgarian universitues and the broader public
hardly aware of or exposed to the developments and knowledge produced in
the discipline. So investment in new positions/programs of anthropology is
never happening: another vicious circle.

One more issue, I am sure other people here will recognize as well. Since I
have finished my Phd and started my academic career, I have not been
employed at departments of anthropology proper, but have been an
anthropologist at departments of social policy and education. As a
post-doc, I have not been able to convince my non-anthropologist PIs, that
AAA is a context in which it is worth presenting the findings of our work.
Even if I intrigued them, the money spent was prohibitive and they prefered
to invest in similarly expensive conferences with "specialists" (e.g.
education conferences, where people working on my subfield are a handful
similarly as at AAA). This has meant, that I my projects never paid my AAA
fees & expenses and while I got institutional funding once, that funding
stream was subsequently cut, so last year I could not afford the flight, so
did not attend despite having paid the membership and fee to register (and
there was no way to claim these back either).

Lastly, I believe beyond fee reduction for certain members categories,
there should be points made about :
- venues : to my mind (public) universities should host such conferences
and benefit from the revenue and exposure if their students
- fellowships and cost sharing: e.g. members fees should be able to support
other memberships/conference fees

Best,
Mariya

*************************************************************
*           Anthropology-Matters Mailing List
*  http://www.anthropologymatters.com            *
* A postgraduate project comprising online journal,    *
* online discussions, teaching and research resources  *
* and international contacts directory.               *
* To join this list or to look at the archived previous       *
* messages visit:                                             *
* http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/Anthropology-Matters.HTML   *
* If you have ALREADY subscribed: to send a message to all    *
* those currently subscribed to the list,just send mail to:   *
*        [log in to unmask]                  *
*                                                             *
*       Enjoyed the mailing list? Why not join the new        *
*       CONTACTS SECTION @ www.anthropologymatters.com        *
*    an international directory of anthropology researchers
*
* To unsubscribe: please log on to jiscmail.ac.uk, and            *
* go to the 'Subscriber's corner' page.                                  *
*
***************************************************************