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Society for Applied Anthropology Presentation

In March I gave a presentation about using Freedom of Information research and laws (FOI) in my own work at one of my professional conferences: the 2026 Society for Applied Anthropology. You can download/view a PDF of my slides here: https://osf.io/46sfd/files/z9dyn.

Caption: Slide from my SFAA presentation showing the substantial variance in fee waivers across state Freedom of Information Laws (FOILs).

I defined my terms and made three arguments using examples from my work and citations from the literature. I defined Freedom of Information Laws (FOILs) FOIL as laws that require information about or created by certain institutions to be created, maintained, and made available to certain people under particular conditions. Which institutions, what info, how it’s made available and to whom and under what conditions (eg fees) often varies by state or even category of information requestor (e.g., media requestor or commercial requestor under the federal FOIA (Freedom of Information Act). For example, part of the performance of being an IRS approved non-profit is filing certain tax information and those filings being publicly available (say, through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer). In New Mexico, nonprofits have to file their bylaws, taxes, and (depending on budget) independent audits with the state Department of Justice which publishes them online. And, of course, there is the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act which covers government records.

First argument: anthropologists under-utilize FOILs relative to their potential benefits for research (this is well demonstrated in the literature, it’s basically a handful of people and I’m one of them).

Caption: An early Freedom of Information Act request of mine was for decades of the Sandia National Laboratories employee newsletter, Sandia Lab News. These newsletters were a vital source for me for data about the history and development of the Nuclear Museum (Pfeiffer 2024, 1).

Second, I argued there can be big benefits to using freedom of information laws. I showed—using my own fieldwork experience—that using freedom of information laws does more than generate data through the FOIL process; although, in my case, the release to me via FOIA of four decades of (what is now) Sandia National Laboratory employee newsletters has been a vital source for tracking the history and connections of the Nuclear Museum and Sandia. FOILs and other methods—like my participant observation as a Museum docent—can also inform each other with each prompting and informing research questions and avenues of approach as when I was repeatedly urged to attend a volunteer brown bag about classification policy.

Caption: Title slide of the 2023 Brown Bag classification program offered to volunteers at the Nuclear Museum. This provided additional questions for research and for FOIA.

This, along with Museum official presentations of the Nuclear Museum’s nature—independent non-profit not presenting nationalist narratives of nuclear weapons and USA power—seemed at odds with the extensive historical and current ties of the National Atomic Museum Foundation with Sandia National Laboratories. Relatedly, I suggested that FOIL work—in keeping with the supposed accountability and transparency aims of most or all such laws—has, or can have, policy and oversight purposes.

Caption: My research shows that nuclear weapons heritage in the USA has been and remains overwhelmingly official and officially shaped AND that officials of the Nuclear Museum portray it in ways that I find incomplete or dissonant with other descriptions in, for example, tax document and the bylaws and tax records or incomplete.

Final argument was that FOIL work involves obligations for researchers. Basically, FOIL results should be made publicly, easily, and freely available to others. These days this generally means posting them online in ways that makes them identifiable, accessible, and downloadable by others. I also emphasized that it is important to work with other researchers, the media, and interested persons (as possible) when your FOIL data is relevant. For me, I maintain the Pfeiffer Nuclear Weapons and National Security Archive (go to “files” and then “FOIA Results: My Requests”) and a Flickr on which I share FOIL results and I discuss my work on Bluesky, this Patreon, and (less frequently) my blog.

Caption: The final slide of my SFAA presentation that includes a photograph of me on the slide of the Nuclear Museum Doom Playground.

And, of course, I provided a sheet of resources for people to take away because community capacity building is part of how we get things done.