Comments on: Anthropology’s Long Tail, or AAA 2.0 /2015/02/26/anthropologys-long-tail-or-aaa-2-0/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology Fri, 08 Dec 2017 18:00:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1 By: johnmccreery /2015/02/26/anthropologys-long-tail-or-aaa-2-0/comment-page-1/#comment-836938 Fri, 06 Mar 2015 04:31:54 +0000 /?p=16169#comment-836938 CLASS must be considered, but SCALE is also an issue. When I started graduate school at Cornell in 1966, John Roberts told me that he could remember when the entire membership of the AAA fit into one large ranch house outside of Tucson. My first AAA was in Pittsburgh. It was memorable less for academic excitement than a casual elevator conversation with a member of the hotel staff. He mentioned that hotels rank professional associations and that, as of that year, Anthropologists were No. 1. Why? We drank more and stole less linen than any other group. Now a AAA requires facilities that can house a meeting for 5,000+ participants. Reno might make the cut. Wichita? Boise? Tuscaloosa? Amarillo? Colorado Springs?

The following membership figures are from Wikipedia and may not be current. Still, as a starting point for further discussion,

American Anthropological Association 11,000
American Sociological Association 14,000 (as of 2010)
American Economics Association 18,000
American Psychological Association 137,000

Ed Liebow has, I hope, better data at his fingertips.

]]> By: Janis Nuckolls /2015/02/26/anthropologys-long-tail-or-aaa-2-0/comment-page-1/#comment-836913 Fri, 27 Feb 2015 17:02:29 +0000 /?p=16169#comment-836913 Quite true. And yet the AAA still operates as if everybody can afford $2,000 junkets to the most expensive cities in North American to attend the annual conferences. Most, of course cannot, which makes the meetings little more than extended cocktail parties for the tenured elite and their well-stocked expense accounts. Let’s see the AAA finally acknowledge CLASS in its membership. The proof that it has done so will be when the annual meeting is held in Wichita or Boise, Tuscaloosa or Amarillo, or Colorado Springs or Reno.

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