It makes me question, yet again, what the value of education in general, and an anthropological education in particular actually is. Both the espoused ideals (especially in relation to antiracism and social justice), and the reality ( it’s really all just about getting a job in the end).

I guess everything is about marketing these days–the brand is you, as Linked In’s founder writes/says, right?–all about making oneself appear as one wants to be seen (publicly). Sad that education for its own sake is really not a ‘marketable value’.

But there are WAY more programs looking for people with some sort of rigorous methodological/conceptual approaches to studying lots of things. Anthropology can be one of those methodological/conceptual approaches. I certainly lead with, “I’m an anthropologist of game development,” when I explain to others what I do. It actually simplifies things a great deal. It tells them instantly my methods and my empirical field (and for many it even signals that I probably care about political-economy / power / …). Of course if they start talking to me then the STS really comes out we/re to conceptual frames, but even STS as a field has a pretty heavy anthropological bent.

What you’re really advocating, is a post-disciplinary notion of academic self-dom, which we should all already have. 😉 It should have been part of the dissertation. It should have been part of the dissertation proposal. “What fields do you want to spend the rest of your life talking to?”