What are the central concerns or topics of cultural anthropology today? What are the main ideas and influences that constitute a middle ground which could unite the discipline? It’s a question that I’m guessing is on many people’s lips and it turns out there is an answer! I recently registered for the 2011 American Anthropological Meetings in Montreal and found that AAA has — wait for it — outsourced the registration system to private company. The new ‘streamlined’ system has many exciting new features, including technical glitches which have resulted in extending the deadline for papers. There is a silver lining though: this year there is a controlled vocabulary for the keywords you use to classify your paper. That’s right: the AAA has provided us a list of terms that anthropologists use to classify their work. I’m not sure where they got the list, but I offer it up here for people to scrutinize and utilize as the ponder what keywords will guide their work for the next 8 months:
A
Activism
Advocacy
Aesthetics
Affect
Africa
Agency
Aging and Life Course
Agriculture and Agrarian Systems
Americas
Anthropology
Applied Anthropology
Archaeology
Architecture/Built Environment
Art and Material Culture
Asia
Australia and New Zealand
B
Bioarchaeology
Biocultural
Biological Anthropology
Body
Borders
Bureaucracy
C
Capitalism
Caribbean
Catholicism
Central America
Central Asia
Ceramics
Change
Children and Youth
China
Christianity
Circulation
Citizenship
Class
Collaboration
Colonialism and Post colonialism
Commodification
Community
Computers, Science and Technology
Conflict and War
Consciousness
Conservation
Consumer Behavior and Design Anthropology
Consumerism
Contact Language
Cultural Politics
Cultural Resource Management
Cultural Transmission
Culture
D
Deaf
Death
Democracy
Demographics
Development
Diaspora
Difference
Digital and Virtual Anthropology
Disability
Discourse
Discrimination
Discussant
Diversity
E
Eastern Africa
Eastern Asia
Eastern Europe
Ecology and Environment
Economic Anthropology
Education
Embodiment
Engaged Anthropology
Engagement
Environment
Epistemology
Equity
Ethics
Ethnicity
Ethno history
Ethnography and Ethnology
Europe
Evolution
Experience
Expertise
F
Family
Feminism
Feminist Anthropology
Festschrift
Fieldwork
Folklore
Food and Nutrition
Food Security
Forensic Anthropology
G
Gender
Genetics and Genomics
Globalization
Governance
Governmentality
Guatemala
H
Health
Heritage
Historic Preservation
Historical Anthropology
Historical Archaeology
History
History of Anthropology
HIV/AIDS
Human Growth and Development
Human Rights and Advocacy
I
Identity
Imagination
Immigrants
Immigration
Inclusion
India
Indigeneity
Indigenous Peoples
Inequality
Innovation
Institutions
Interdisciplinary
Islam
J
Japan
Justice
K
Kinship and Families
Knowledge
Korea
L
Labor and Work
Landscape and Spatial Studies
Language and Cognition
Language Ideologies
Latin America
Latin America and the Caribbean
Laughter
Law
Learning
Legal and Political Anthropology
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistics
Linguistics – Descriptive and Comparative
Literature and Poetics
M
Markets
Material Culture/Materiality
Maya
Media and Journalism
Medical Anthropology
Melanesia
Memory
Methodology
Micronesia
Middle Africa
Middle East
Migration, Immigration and Diasporas
Military
Mobility
Modernity
Morality
Motherhood
Museum Anthropology
Museums
Music and Sound
N
Narrative
Nation
Nationalism
Native Americans
Neoliberals
NGO
North America
Northern Africa
Northern Europe
O
Oceania
Organizational Anthropology
P
Paleoanthropology
Participation
Pedagogy
Performance
Performance and Festivals
Personhood
Place
Policy
Political Ecology
Political Economy
Political Subjectivity
Politics
Polynesia
Popular Culture
Post Socialism
Poverty
Power
Practice
Primatology
Protest
Psychological Anthropology
Public
Public Anthropology
Public Health
Public Policy
Publics
Q
Queer
R
Race and Racism
Reciprocity
Reflexivity
Refugees
Religion and Cosmology
Representation
Reproduction
Research/Research Methods
Resistance
Rhetoric and Communication
Rituals and Life Cycle Events
Rural Anthropology
S
Schooling
Science
Security
Semiotics
Sexuality
Sign Language
Skeletal Biology
Social Change
Social Justice
Social Movements
Socialites
Sociolinguistics
South America
South Asia
South-East Asia
Southern Africa
Southern Asia
Southern Europe
Sovereignty
State/s
Subjectivity
Sustainability
T
Teacher Education
Teaching
Technology
Theory
Tourism
Tradition
Transitional Justice
Translation
Trauma
U
Undergraduate
United States
Urban
Urban Anthropology
Urban Space
V
Value
Violence
Visual Anthropology
W
War
Western Africa
Western Asia
Western Europe
Work
World
Writing
It’s minor but … who the heck spells Southeast Asia as South-East Asia anymore? Someone is stuck in early 20th c Britain.
Having to select three keywords to describe my project was distressing enough…but then to slight “secularism”? I’ll wager I’m not alone in feeling bruised by that one.
Do we need some “healing” here?
I was hoping there would be a post about this. The list is really weird. I was only able to find two key words that were applicable to my paper submission. One of those was a geographic area and the other was only loosely connected to my research..They should have let us choose words like in previous years because I think a lot of other people are going to be in the same boat as me. I have a feeling that I’m going to miss some talks that are pertinent to my area of research just because I won’t be able to find them when I search the online program.
Even if you think that there should be a fixed list of terms, you have to admit that there are very strange organizational choices in this list. Several Asian countries get their own key words (China, Japan, Korea) and yet major areas of research in Latin America like Mexico or Brazil or in Africa like Ghana or Kenya do not get specific entries. Commodification and consumerism are mentioned but there is no mention of consumption (not the same as either of those two terms). Islam, Christianity and Catholicism are mentioned but Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Protestantism are not. There are no keywords for people researching ethnic minorities in the United States (you cannot just lump research on African Americans or Latinos under racism or immigration).
On another note, I found the whole registration system to be poorly designed. For some reason, the last letter of my current university got cut off in my registration. When I payed for my registration my name was listed last name first with no comma while when I registered my presentation (thankfully) my name was listed first name first (as it should hopefully be listed in the program). I really don’t understand why they got rid of the perfectly fine system they had last year. Unfortunately, it’s what I’ve come to expect from the AAA.
There was a process by which we could contribute new keywords and the old ones, if I recall accurately the explanation that was given on the site itself, were derived from those used by submitters in past years.
Damnit Rex, I was just about to post my mock up for anthropological alphabet blocks.
A is for Australopithecus
B is for Boas
C is for Cargo Cult
…
I had to find keywords for my panel as well as my own paper, and it was truly maddening. I appreciated the opportunity to submit suggested keywords for the future but I wish that they had given us this opportunity prior to developing the list. The fact, for example that language ideology isn’t in there in any form at all is maddening, and “media” alone wasn’t there, just “media and journalism” which isn’t quite what I was shooting for.
I grok the desire for a closed set of categories, but I don’t think this is really it.
I wonder why there’s no graft under G or corruption under C. Are anthropologists not interested in studying graft and corruption? Open an Indian news website and you’ll see articles about corruption from page to page, yet I still have to read a good ethnographic account about graft and corruption in India.
My favorite is that the only entry under Q is ‘queer’, like, not ‘queer study’ or ‘queers’ but the _adjective_.
Ya, no ‘internet.’ This is my first chance to really be a minority!
Also shows some serious bias against archaeology. We get “archaeology”, “bioarchaeology” and “historical archaeology”? Nothing that starts with antiqu*, and I’m guessing they included “ceramics” for the archaeologists too. I guess they probably meant archaeology for “Material Culture/Materiality”, though smushing those two concepts together kinda jumbles things.
A few of the other keywords obviously can be play both ways. Bland descriptions like “Culture” and “Society”, “Agency” etc. But on the whole the list seems to demonstrate the alienation of archaeology as a subfield within the AAA.
Or maybe we just speak different languages.
War but no Peace? Queer but no LGBT? Nevertheless, I love lists…
One of these things is not like the others. Only one specific ethnicity (not a geographic name) gets a mention: Maya.
I am the grad student guy who wrote the first grad student guy post. The second grad student guy is an imposter. I’ve reported the comment.
[Sorry, but unless you use your real name and e-mail address, we have no way of controlling who uses what handle. This post, clarifying that the previous one wasn’t by you should be enough to set matters straight. – Savage Minds]
@ JW
Yes, I noticed that as well. I wonder if it is a polite way to sneak in the 2012 end of the world thing.
@Gwen Kelly – Alienation of archaeologists within the AAA? Don’t get me started. The total number of cultural anthropologists who have expressed an interest in my research (on ancient cities) is one (1), count ’em: “one” (Setha Low). Yet after a couple of years of reaching out to other disciplines I am still finding new geographers, planners, urban historians, architects, and political scientists who are very interested in what I do (and want to collaborate). I’ll just add one more observation: my alienation from the AAA lies less with the urban topic than with epistemological and professional issues (anyone seen Alice Dreger’s paper in Human Nature on the Tierney/Chagnon episode?). In fact, I just resigned from the AAA and joined the Social Science History Association.
@Michael – I hadn’t heard of the SSHA. I’m looking at their website now and its really interesting. Do folks there do work in collective memory?
I’d suggest the AAA should get some librarians to build their thesaurus, but you should see the registration systems we have to deal with…
@Matt- I’m not real familiar with the territory of the SSHA. They do have some interest in longue durée history, and links to historical anthropology.
The implication being that if you call yourself an anthropologist and are not an archaeologist and/or a physical anthropologist then you are either That Guy (who cites Žižek all the time) or Setha Low? If I were looking for anthropologists who aren’t archaeologists but nevertheless know what the term ‘settlement pattern’ means the Mesoamericanist table is the first place I would visit. In my experience anthropologists rarely openly express an interest in another living anthropologist’s work. I’ve never taken that to necessarily mean they aren’t interested.