Tag Archives: anthropologies

The anthropologies revival (call for ideas and submissions)

It’s time to bring the anthropologies project back to life.  The project was on “sabbatical” all of last year while I was working on turning an unfinished dissertation into a done dissertation. Now it’s time to bring it back, and I’m looking for people to take part. Here are the (tentative) ideas I have for the next few issues:

  1. Issue on the social, environmental, and political implications of climate change (with, hopefully, contributions from archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, linguistic anthros and ???).
  2. Anthropological perspectives on the food we eat–what it means, where it comes from, what it does to us (would be great to have cultural, archaeological, and bio-anth perspectives here).
  3. An anthropology of home/housing/shelter (I imagine a broad anthropological take on the idea of home/shelter that spans from the present to the past. Again, here it would be great to have submissions from across anthropology. I keep thinking of submissions about the meaning of the contemporary Tiny House movement alongside archaeological takes on rock shelters. Maybe some cross-cultural stuff on housing, economics, and use of space?? A revisit of Bourdieu’s The Berber House? Mix it up!).

Interested? Send me an email! Have some ideas? Email me!! In order to bring anthropologies back I’m going to need some help. I will announce more specific dates for upcoming issues and themes soon.

Here’s some info on contributing and submitting to anthropologies: Continue reading →

Anthropologies on Savage Minds

After a couple years of running the anthropologies project and writing for Savage Minds, I have decided to combine my online energies.  Anthropologies is moving to Savage Minds!  The core idea of the project is going to stay the same, but the way it works is going to change a bit.  Instead of publishing collections of essays all at once in journal-esque format, the new anthropologies here on Savage Minds will entail a series of themed, invited posts over a 1-2 month period.  At the end of the series I will publish the collection in either E-pub or PDF format to make things nice and accessible.  I think it’s going to work out very well.

All upcoming issues will be announced in advance to encourage as much participation as possible.  If you have any comments or ideas, please feel free to email me at ethnografix at gmail dot com.  Suggestions and ideas are always welcome.

The first Savage Minds/anthropologies issue will focus on the pressing, depressing, and ever-worsening subject of student debt.  It’s an issue that affects far too many people, and it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.  I wrote about student debt here on Savage Minds a while back–at the end of the post I mentioned the idea of marshaling anthropology to start finding some answers.  That’s what this issue is all about: bringing anthropology to bear on a subject that hits close to home for a lot of people trying to slog their way through grad school, recent graduation, adjunct-hood, and the horrible job market.  Several contributors are already lined up, and the first installment of the series will be online soon!  In anticipation of the student debt issue, check out this must read article on the Chronicle of Higher Ed by Audrey Williams June (published today), which mentions the PhD Debt Survey that Karen Kelsky started just a few days ago (it already has more than a thousand anonymous responses).  Also check out Rebecca Schuman’s related piece on Slate.  Those two articles will be a good prep for taking on–and hopefully pushing back against–the entrenched problem of student debt.

*Upcoming themes include: The politics of global warming and environmentalism; Aging; The uses and abuses of “culture”;  An anthropology of the stuff we eat.  And more!  This series is open to suggestions, participation, and ideas, so please feel free to post your comments here or email me (ethnografix@gmail.com).