Dear Colleagues, 

Paul Shackel, Laurajane Smith, and I are seeking submissions for a session we're organizing for the upcoming Sixth World Archaeology Congress in Dublin, Ireland this summer.We are interested in papers that deal with material culture and archaeologists' attempts to use their studies of working/working-class communities for the purposes of civic engagement; the abstract for the session is below.  The deadline for submission is February 22 2008.  For more information on WAC-6, go to the website at http://www.ucd.ie/wac-6/.  
 
Thanks, 
Dave Gadsby
 
David Gadsby
Assistant Director 
Center for Heritage Resource Studies
Department of Anthropology
University of Maryland
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Civic Engagement and Working Communities: Historical Archaeologies of Labor
 

David Gadsby (American University)
 
Laurajane Smith (University of York, Department of Archaeology)
 
Paul Shackel (University of Maryland, Department of Anthropology)
 
Format
15-20 Minute Papers followed by discussion to conclude
 
Abstract
 
While the forces at work on communities of workers are global in scale, they simultaneously operate in myriad local settings where scenarios of everyday domination and resistance play out in the social/material world. The anthropology of work and labor is necessarily material, and working people and their communities have increasingly become a focus of archaeologists interested in using their work as a tool for social change. These archaeologists work to dismantle contemporary myths about the labor movement, raise social consciousness by asserting the role of working people in history, draw attention to injuries and atrocities that result from unfair labor practices, and give face and name to often forgotten groups and individuals. In doing so they use the archaeological record, a powerful but sometimes ambiguous source of evidence about the daily lives, practices and relationships of people enmeshed in processes of production and consumption. The challenge for civically engaged archaeologists is to make their work relevant to the publics with which they work. 


__________________________________
David A. Gadsby
Assistant Director
Center for Heritage Resource Studies
Department of Anthropology
University of Maryland
1125 Woods Hall
College Park, MD  20742
301-405-0085