Dear...

We announce the formation of the Society for Anthropological Sciences (SAS), a new professional group intended to provide a broad forum to promote empirical research and social science in anthropology. The members of SAS want to further the development of anthropological science as empirical knowledge based on testable theory, sound research design and systematic methods for data collection and analysis. By doing so, we seek to fulfill the historic mission of anthropology to describe and explain the range of variation in human biology, society and culture across time and space.

The impetus for the SAS was the rejection of several symposia from the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in fall 2002. An Internet discussion arose (listserver anthro-sciences@jiscmail.ac.uk. The discussion focused on the dissatisfaction felt by many colleagues with the anti-science bias of much contemporary anthropology. The participants decided to organize a "Salon des Refusés" (http://hcs.ucla.edu/new-orleans-2002/) to initiate the creation of a new society whose focus would be on scientific work. (The original Salon des Refusés occurred in Paris in 1863 when a group of artists organized their own show after being rejected by the official Academy Salon.) The nature and function of the SAS will be discussed at an open meeting 9:00-11:00 AM at the Drury Hotel, adjacent to the AAA meetings in New Orleans, Saturday November 23, 2002. .

This newly formed society will be functioning under the general umbrella of the American Anthropological Association. The Society is sponsored by the US-National Science Foundation, the Center for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council as well as the UCLA Human Complex Systems center. It presently embraces well over one hundred members among them distinguished professors and members of the US Academy of Sciences. More information can be obtained from Dr. David Kronenfeld, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, 909/787-4340, kfeld@citrus.ucr.edu.