Working Session: Spatial Orientation
Organizers: Alex Mawyer and Rick Feinberg

This year, about a dozen participants gathered to discuss eight ethnographically robust papers on spatial orientation and the problem of ambiguity. We were pleased to note the geographical range of the papers as well as the breadth of their topical coverage. The contributions drew attention to themes of way-finding, environmental-spatial cognition (e.g., wind compasses), frames of reference, spatial symbolism and political structure, spatial metaphysics and cosmology, and performance spaces in terms of the formal and informal ambiguities in or ambivalences about spatial orientation. This focus on uncertain or ‘fuzzy’ cognition, we felt, offers a timely and significant conversation within Pacific anthropology. Although we felt the papers were individually very fine and could be sent off for publication without much revision, there was a unanimous agreement on the goal of pursuing collective publication either as a special issue of an appropriate journal or edited volume. Those who presented work in the session include: Brenda Boerger, Rick Feinberg, Joe Genz, Alex Mawyer, Susan Montague, Cathy Pyrek, Katharina Schneider, Micah Van der Ryn, and discussant John Huth.

Alex Mawyer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lake Forest College, 555 N. Sheridan Rd., Lake Forest, Illinois 60045, USA; tel. 847-735-5239; mawyer@lakeforest.edu

Richard Feinberg, Department of Anthropology, Kent State University, Kent OH 44242 USA; tel. 330-672-2722; rfeinber@kent.edu