First, a disclaimer: There have been many critiques of the MacArthur grants and I share the sentiments of most of the critics — I can’t help but feel they MacArthur’s are heavy on New York and LA awardees, and I often feel you have to be pretty centrally placed in these networks just to get a look from them.

But I can’t really complain. There have been 24 anthropologists elected MacArthur fellows out of the total 942 people who have recieved the award which is, like, 2% of awardees, sure. But I still think it’s something to be proud of. Also, we have been consistent winers, pulling in at least one MacArthur every other year or so from the very first year it was awarded, until 2000, when they started to become more intermittent.

Some of the people listed as ‘anthropologists’ are a bit distant from the academic core of our discipline, while others (for instance, Michael Silvstein, who won in 1982) get classified in other disciplines (in Silverstein’s case ‘linguistics’). As a result a list of the anthropology winners looks a bit odd. But I do think it is accurate. When I look at the names of winners what immediately strikes me (other than possibly a cabal of linguistic anthropologists passing the award around cough) is how right the MacArthurs got anthropology. Ruth Behar, Alfonso Ortiz, Paul Farmer, Eric Wolf, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Sherry Ortner, Steven Feld — these really are among the best and brightest that our discipline has produced.

A while ago I compiled a list of anthropologists who have recieved the MacArthur, and today’s announcement seems like a good time to share it with you, so here it is. I compiled it by going to MacArthur’s list of awardees and then searching for the term ‘anthropology’, so this captures how MacArthur categorizes its fellows (hmm… I can’t seem to find the page that I originally used to compile this list… so maybe this list is now ungrounded and worthless… or a valuable historical artifact… hmm…). I didn’t try to cut the people who didn’t seem to me to fit, or include others who might fit on this list. It’s really just a filtering of what was on their page. If you were looking for something to read over the weekend, you wouldn’t go wrong chosing any of these authors. Have a good weekend!

1981 – Shelly Errington
1981 – Lawrence Rosen
1982 – Alfonso Ortiz
1983 – William H. Durham
1984 – Shirley Heath
1988 – Ruth Behar
1989 – Jennifer Moody
1990 – Sherry Ortner
1990 – Eric Wolf
1991 – Steven Feld
1992 – Nora English
1993 – Paul Farmer
1993 – Henry Wright
1994 – Faye Ginsburg
1997 – Brackette Williams
1998 – Elinor Ochs
1999 – Denny Moore
2000 – Gary Urton
2002 – Erik Mueggler
2007 – Mercedes Doretti
2007 – Svan Haakanson
2008 – Stephen Houston
2010 – Shannon Lee Dawdy
2013 – Julie Livingston