Let us begin by correcting some misconceptions. First, our association had its beginning in 1988, when the meeting of January 1989 was organized; these dates are significant because they precede by many months the fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent end of the Cold War. And second, the 1989 meeting was neither an inaugural nor a General Assembly but an informal, tentative exploration of an idea, whose outcomewas by no means a foregone conclusion. The notion of an association bringing European anthropologists together seems inevitable now,but it was viewed by many at the time as unlikely and, at best, unworkable. (“You’ll never get the French and the Germans to talk to each other,” it was said,“and the British can’t—or won’t–talk to anyone who doesn’t speak English.”)
Still it was an idea that was in the air.It began to take concrete form in a conversation I had with Adam Kuper, who was then the editor of Current Anthropology, the journal sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. His interest in it dovetailed with my strategy at Wenner-Gren of fostering regional or continent-wide networks of anthropologists, rather than supporting national or international associations. It seemed to me that the regional level was broad enough to discourage parochialism and create lines of communication beyond national structures and local politics, yet limited enough to make regular interaction possible.
Adam proposed holding a meeting of a group of European social anthropologists to explore the possibility of an association, and I agreed that Wenner-Gren would fund it in full. The moment seemed right. In recent years, a time of relative prosperity, there had been increasing contact among anthropologists both within Europe and with colleagues abroad. Many European anthropologists were now bilingual, and in general, linguistic chauvinism had eased. Most significantly, the impending European Union slated for 1992 was creating optimism for a European identity, and the promise of resources with which to build it. Unspoken was a widespread sense of frustration at the hegemony of North American anthropology; joining forces in a wider, European, community could bea counterweight to the Americans.
Adam began to draw up a list of invitees, based on his own network of acquaintances and the suggestions of others whom he consulted. He sought active scholars at mid-career, not the most senior figures in their countries nor major officeholders in associations at home. His basic premise was that each person would attend as an individual, not as the representative of any national organization. He hoped to include every country in Western Europe, but did not entirely succeed in that aim. In the end, there were nineteen participants: three from the UK—along with Adam there were David Parkin and John Davis (whose good offices gained us the conference site); two from the Netherlands, Jeremy Boissevain and Jarich Osten; from France, Daniel de Coppet and Philippe Descola; from Germany, Georg Pfeffer and Rolf Husman; and from Spain, Teresa del Valle and José Luis García; and one each from Austria, Andre Gingrich; Belgium, Luc de Heusch; Denmark,Kirsten Hastrup; Norway, Eduardo Archetti; Sweden, Gudrun Dahl; Italy, Bernardo Bernardi; Greece, Akis Papataxiarchis; and Portugal, João Piña-Cabral. Two Italian colleagues attended as observers, and this was my roleas well.
The Western European composition of the group was no accident, of course. In Adam’s letter of invitation, and in the documents he put together prior to the meeting, the reference was to a “Western European Association of Social Anthropologists.” The geographical boundaries of an association’s “West” were not clearly delineated, butthe real issue was the central concern(for many in the founding group) to keep an association’s identity strictly “social anthropology”, which might readily be scuttled or swamped were it open to the large number of Eastern European ethnologists, folklorists, and functionaries of various sorts.
The very agreeable venue was the conference center of ENI (the Italian state petroleum company) in Castelgandolfo, in the shadow of the Pope’s summer residence. The meeting ran over the weekend of January 13-15, 1989, with two days of sessions (Saturday and Sunday) and dinners together on Friday and Saturday evenings.
The first session opened with a round-robin, in which each participant summarized the state of anthropology is his or her country: its historical background, institutional structure, numbers of professionals and students, professional associations, sources of funding, and problems. Rolf Husman provided relevant information on Switzerland. The overall message was upbeat; almost everywhere anthropology was alive and well, growing, and ready for engagement with other countries. The session was intended to be informational, not an endorsement of the idea of an association, but what Adam later described as starting as “a slow minuet” on that score quickly turned into a unanimous, vigorous consensus: that such an association was needed; that it should be limited to “social anthropologists”; and that membership should be on an individual basis, unmediated by any entity.
Then the tensions and problems emerged. How was social anthropology to be defined, and what doors should be opened to European traditions that used “culture” or “ethnology” rather than “social” in their self-descriptions? After much discussion, the resolution was to leave it to self-identification: anyone who considered himself/herself a social anthropologist would be considered, with eligibility for membership based on professional qualifications. In the end, the constitution defined social anthropology to include “specialists in social and cultural anthropology and ethnology.”
The same strategy of self-identification, it was suggested, would deal with the West/East issue. “Europe” would not be precisely defined. Rather, as Adam described the decision: “we will get to know the map of European social anthropology as it defines itself.” Thus, the association was born as “European”, not “Western European” as it was originally phrased. This was fortunate, because, of course, before the year was out Eastern Europe erupted, and any effort to maintain an academic boundary between East and West would have been obsolete before the association actually got under way. (A measure of how quickly things changed came during the assembly at the first conference, in Coimbra; when the floor was opento the question of where the next conference would be held, Vaclav Hubinger from Czechoslovakia, newly elected to the executive committee, proposed Prague, to vociferous acclaim.)
If the association was to define its geographical range loosely and its discipline narrowly, there remained a more general tension between inclusion and exclusion. Would the criteria for membership be strongly professional, or would they make room for students and others not fully established professionally? The solution was to have different categories of membership: regular membership would require a postgraduate degree from or a full-time position in a European institution, while a more inclusive category of associate membership would be open to students and certain others. The question of whether non-Europeans with research interests in Europe would be admitted was disposed of rapidly: members were to beEuropean, not Europeanist, anthropologists—an important distinction if the association were not to be flooded with Americans.
Inevitably, the problem of language, skirted at the beginning, could not be avoided. The initial suggestion was to follow the traditional diplomatic approach of using English and French as the official languages. Then, it was proposed to add a third language: Spanish, on the grounds that it was one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. But the idea of holding the first conference, the following year, in Coimbra had already been floated, and at that point Piña-Cabral stated that the conference could not take place there if Spanish were an official language and Portuguese were not. Someone else (not one of the British) argued that the fairest solution was to keep English as the sole language, since the more you try to include others the more you discriminate against someone. In the end, the consensus was to be silent on the question of language, official or otherwise, and leave the problem to find its own solution. The decision taken was that any European language could be used in any association context. It was predicted that most members would choose to use the language in which they thought they would be most widely understood, not the one they preferred to speak. The first conference bore that out; not surprisingly, the language used was almost always English.
There followed a discussion of what functions the association would take on, and here the critical question was the degree to which it would go beyond strictly professional activities (which everyone agreed were primary) to engage wider publics. This matter too was to be a work in progress.
With general points of agreement established, the participants then divided into four working groups focused on constitutional questions, conferences, educational initiatives, and publications. The working groups met for the remainder of the first day.
On Sunday morning, the leaders of the working groups reported on their recommendations, which were discussed and modified by the whole body. David Parkin reported on proposals for the constitution (the association’s structure, membership, governance, elections, etc.), noting the different approaches to constitutional issues among European countries (he remarked, the farther south you go, the more complex and legalistic they become). (I intervened in the discussion only once, suggesting that it was the AAA’s experience that mail ballots are fairer than voting in a general assembly—at which point I was reprimanded: “the constitution has tobe legal here; it has nothing to do with the AAA.”)
Daniel de Coppet reported on conferences, proposing that they be held biennially in different countries. Earlier, the whole body had debated two different models: the AAA’s large, inclusive meetings, as against the British ASA format of more exclusive, leisurely presentations. Everyone agreed they were opposed to the AAA “circus”. The working group proposed a compromise: two days of plenaries, with four thematic panels each one consisting of three invited, lengthy papers (presumably by distinguished individuals); then a third day left open for volunteered papers and seminars. (I could see where this would lead. Even by the time of the first conference, there were vocal objections to this “elitist” formula and, over time, more and more demand for greater inclusiveness and more time for volunteered papers. Thus, the AAA circus model was soon reinvented.)
The working groups on publication and on education floated a number of ideas. Plans for a newsletter and directory of the membership were put into place immediately; a journal and a monograph series were recommended but thought to be far in the future (the future arrived barely three years later). The education group foresaw a number of collaborative programs, which were quite quickly implemented.
The last item of business was to elect a provisional executive committee of five. It was decided to invite open nominations and then have a vote by secret ballot. The call for nominations yielded fourteen names (two-thirds of the whole body). When the ballots were counted, Philippe Descola, Kirsten Hastrup, Rolf Husman, and Adam Kuper were elected (a fortunate but accidental national distribution). There was a tie between Terese del Valle and David Parkin, who offered to withdraw; the group, however, refused, and called for a formal vote. With the two of them out of the room, del Valle was narrowly elected. The national and gender balance of the outcome was vital to the association’s success, but it was a lucky accident of the democratic process that the founders insisted upon. (When later that year I hosted a similar meeting to create the Pan African Association of Anthropologists, I learned that our African colleagues did not leave such important matters to chance.)
So on January 15, 1989, EASA emerged. Some of the problems thrashed out at the meeting continued, even to the present: language, exclusion/inclusion, European/non-European relations. Some intensified, such as the role of students, and new ones, such as gender politics, arose. Europe has changed, and what then seemed a rosy future for a united, vigorous Europe has been supplanted by threats and crises on all sides. Long gone is the widely felt enthusiasm for a European Union that gave impetus to the creation of EASA. But the die was cast, and EASA will survive no matter the wider politics. On our 25th anniversary, we can look back at this event and marvel at how far we have come from what was a very uncertain beginning.
Sydel Silverman
City University of New York and
The Wenner-Gren Foundation
