It’s long been my belief that anthropologists can increase their public visibility and engagement by working together, especially cross-promoting each other’s work. The PopAnth website has been using social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn) to bring attention to articles written by anthropologists in newspapers, on blogs, in books, and so on.

Recently, I’ve had conversations with Tricia Wang (Ethnography Matters), Matt Thompson (Savage Minds / DANG) and Ryan Anderson (Anthropologies Project / DANG) about furthering collaboration. We agreed that it would be a great idea!

DANG are already bringing together all kinds of people who are interested in open access, digital anthropology, blogging, and so on. For this reason, I suggested that the DANG website might be a good place to put information that can help anthropologists in their public engagement: stuff on open access, guides to writing for the public, ideas on how to get published in newspapers, and so on.

But that’s just one idea. My question is: how do we best coordinate?

There are indeed a lot of us out there who are thinking along similar lines, and we’re often off on our own doing our own things.  This is good, on many levels.  But I also think we could use a bit of collaboration, working together, and finding ways to move the idea of a more public anthropology toward a reality.

My initial response is this: I think there are at least three primary concerns here.  First, we need to find a way to coordinate across our various projects and bring all of our conversations together into one place.  Second, there’s a need to create some sort of central, organized resource where anthropologists can find resources about open access, writing for the general public, publishing, etc.  Finally, I really think there’s a need to finally create a venue that specifically targets non-academic anthropologists.  This last point is key, I think.  A lot of the sites and projects that are pushing for a more publicly engaged anthropology are actually only going to appeal to anthropologists (and maybe some outside the field).  In short, we’re still promoting a lot of our ideas to ourselves for the most part (this is definitely the case with the anthropologies project, despite the original goal of bringing anthropology to wider audiences).

So what about solutions?

1) Coordination.  Maybe we need a site that is easily accessible, where anyone can comment easily so that the conversations flow with few barriers.  Daniel Lende suggested using Tumblr here.  That could work.  Or maybe a dedicated Facebook page?  Maybe a series of open threads on the DANG site?  Other ideas?  Basically, it would be nice to have a central place where we can all keep the fire burning.

2) The central resource for anthropologists.  Well, to me it makes sense to finally create this central place either on the DANG site, or on the Open Access Anthropology site.  This idea has been floating around for a while, so maybe now is the time to make it happen.  This is doable.

3) The public venue for anthropology.  I think it’s about time that we all put our heads together and create something that is meant to move our ideas and conversations outside of our inner circle.  I am talking about either a publication or online magazine/project that will have a wide readership and appeal.  Something that’s not made just for anthropologists.  Personally, I have always wanted to see an anthropologically-informed publication that gets inspiration from a combination of publications like Nature, Adbusters, the amazing magazine Colors, Science, what ASA has done with Contexts, and so on.  There are plenty of publications that we can look to for inspiration.  I think we need something that can rival (and challenge) dominant media venues and publications.  To really bring contemporary anthropology out into the open.  Content + solid, interesting, compelling design.  Hmmm?  We have the ideas, we have the fascinating research.  Why not?

Ok, ideas?  Thoughts?  Comments?

Last year some of us collaborated to create what’s called a “interest group,” a club basically, within the AAA for those of interested in digital anthropology. The DANG organizational business meeting was a roaring success, ideas were floated, business cards were exchanged, hands were uhm… shaken? shook? Anyways, it was a great time and we do in fact have a tangible and official result that you can participate in at this year’s conference as a result. “Bridging digital and physical publics: Digital anthropologists’ current engagement with 21st century publics” chaired by Bonnnie Nardi (UC-Irvine) and Sydeny Yeager (SMU) is on the preliminary program for Friday morning.

DANG is grateful to the Society for Visual Anthropology who reached out to us and invited us to submit a conference panel proposal for them to review. Bloggers and other digirati: if you have this slot free in your schedule please join us at the panel so that we can make plans to socialize later. Sydeny tells me she’s interested in meeting people over lunch afterwards. In the past we’ve had great turn outs for our AAA tweet-up where bloggers and tweeters show up at a nearby pub one night. Someone will take the initiative for this in mid-November. Probably a Chicago alum. Rex, I’m looking in your general direction…

Of course not everyone has the opportunity to travel — conferences are pricey. I know! I’m still paying off my credit card from the last one. But for those of you who will be present I would invite you to take this space on Savage Minds to begin thinking about meeting up in meatspace. If you’re a blogger and will be at the conference or are presenting on topics related to digital anthropology tell us about your blog or panel in the comments section. Viva DANG!