Dear SEA members,

The abstract submission portal for the SEA 43rd Annual Meeting — Wellbeing and the Common Good — is open now through through January 7, 2023.

In our third year of a global pandemic, we are stretched thin, suffering touches us all, and our wells of empathy seem to be running dry. And yet, despite this suffering many of us are also paying closer attention to our own well-being and to the well-being of those around us. In this spirit of exploration and cautious hope, the theme of the 2023 Society for Economic Anthropology meeting will be “Well-Being and the Common Good.” Drawing in part from a growing “anthropology of the good” (coined by Joel Robbins), we seek papers that challenge us to rethink the economy as one part of a total experience aimed at making life worthwhile. The anthropology of the good asks us to reflect on the values we hold as economic anthropologists and how these values lead us to investigate (or set aside) topics like well-being or the common good. Bringing these topics to the foreground of economic research can help us understand where we have fallen short and where we might succeed in efforts to study, reveal, highlight, and perhaps help people to achieve well-being and the common good.

Please join us to explore this topic at the SEA’s annual meeting from May 18 to 20, 2023 at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

The Society for Economic Anthropology welcomes and encourage papers that showcase the range of anthropological efforts, including the work of archaeologists, linguistic anthropologists, biological anthropologists, medical anthropologists, and applied anthropologists among others

You may choose to submit your abstract for a paper, a poster, or both. Papers will receive 20-minute presentation slots and will be considered for inclusion in the 2024 special issue of Economic Anthropology dedicated to the conference theme. Posters will receive space in an in person or virtual poster session. If your abstract is not selected for a presentation slot, it will be considered for the poster sessions.

We aim to review all abstracts and return decisions by January 31, 2023 and to create a program by February 15, 2023.

The official registration portal for the conference will be hosted by the American Anthropological Association and will open in early 2023.

If you have any questions, please contact the meeting chair, John Millhauser (millhauser@ncsu.edu).

Conference details and the full call for papers are available on the SEA website.