Shaping Futures
Founded in 2001 as a section of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA) is committed to developing international channels of communication among anthropologists throughout the world. We promote discussion and share information on diverse topics related to the anthropology of East Asia and other societies/cultures of Asia and the Pacific Basin with historical or contemporary ties to East Asia; and diasporic societies/cultures identified with East Asia.
We build a legacy that expands possibilities for coming generations under the banner of “shaping futures.” We take shaping futures as an assertion, a responsibility, a platform for trans-national community-building, and a call to action. It is a crucial responsibility for anthropologists to advance the ongoing inter-generational and inter-regional dynamism that creates our legacy. We thus foreground mentoring—both vertical and lateral—as central to such dynamism. In committing to a vibrant future that responds to constantly changing conditions, we actively promote cross-generational leadership and empathic mentorship that builds legacies across space, time, regions, institutions, and people.