Anthropological Keywords, 2011 edition

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

 

Rex

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His book Leviathans at The Gold Mine has been published by Duke University Press. You can contact him at rex@savageminds.org

20 thoughts on “Anthropological Keywords, 2011 edition

  1. It’s minor but … who the heck spells Southeast Asia as South-East Asia anymore? Someone is stuck in early 20th c Britain.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. My favorite is that the only entry under Q is ‘queer’, like, not ‘queer study’ or ‘queers’ but the _adjective_.

  9. 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.

  10. One of these things is not like the others. Only one specific ethnicity (not a geographic name) gets a mention: Maya.

  11. 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]

  12. @ 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.

  13. @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.

  14. @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?

  15. 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…

  16. 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).

    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.

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