You may have heard about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is now in effect in Europe. The GDPR improves transparency and data privacy rights of individuals. The following points summarize the steps that AAA has taken to protect the privacy rights of our members.
You can access AAA’s complete General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Privacy Policy using this link (PDF).
Credit Card Information
AAA ONLY uses credit card information to process payments authorized by the individual. Credit card information is collected online through a secure transaction. The AAA uses Vantiv to process credit card transactions.
Information Collection
The AAA collects a variety of demographic and descriptive data about its members. The data is collected within the members-only section of the AAA website as well as on the AAA membership application. Other than the required basic contact information, members have control over what information they choose to provide.
Information Uses
The AAA uses this data to communicate directly with members and to allow staff to better provide benefits and services to the membership. Information is also made available to other AAA members. Members have control over what information is made available. The AAA occasionally makes name and mailing address information available to third parties who are identified as providing information deemed likely to be of interest to the AAA membership.
Member Control
Each member may go to the AAA website and identify exactly what information is made available to other members and whether or not their name and address information is made available to third parties.
Online Member Search
The AAA provides members access to use the online Member Directory for the purpose of scholarly exchange related to the study of anthropology. To protect members’ privacy, the AAA does not allow use of the online Member Directory for commercial purposes, nor does it allow the collection and retention of member information for mass mailings of any kind. Restrictions on the number of searches apply. The AAA may at its sole discretion remove the search privileges of any member.
Gender And Ethnicity
In 2019 the AAA Executive Board approved an initiative to begin requesting certain demographic data about our members and contributors to our publications to help the Association better gauge our improvements in equity and inclusion on behalf of the discipline. AAA now requires people who join or renew their membership, and people who submit articles for peer review, to respond to a request for a bit of information about themselves, specifically how they identify themselves with respect to gender and race/ethnicity. One of the possible responses is “prefer not to answer,” but some sort of response will now be expected. At the moment, we do not know with any certainty about the composition of our membership, the backgrounds and identities of people submitting manuscripts for publication in our journals and proposals for the Annual Meeting, applying for fellowships and awards, and so forth. Without this information, we have no way of holding ourselves accountable as an equitable, inclusive association.
We have been working with the Members’ Programmatic Advisory and Advocacy Committee on the specific wording of this request, as well as reviewing how sister societies obtain this information. We recognize the disadvantages of these category labels, and we also recognize that we still have much ground to cover to live up to our high expectations for an inclusive, equitable, and accessible association. We will only know that we are gaining on our expectations if we have some specific ways of holding ourselves accountable.