American Anthropological Association

A message from T.J. Ferguson, AAA Executive Board member and incoming chair of the Anthropological Communication Committee:

In November and December 2009, AAA and Wiley-Blackwell are offering free access to over ten years of Anthrosource content, AAA’s online portal for anthropological research.

I encourage the practicing community to take advantage of this opportunity to explore the benefits of Anthrosource as a research tool. In particular, I’d like to draw to your attention some efforts being made in American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of AAA, to make sure this title brings practicing, applied, and public anthropologists and their contributions into this august record of the field.

In June 2009, the journal published a review by Melissa Checker of 2008 literature, “Anthropology in the Public Sphere, 2008: Emerging Trends and Significant Impacts.”   The editor of the journal, Tom Boellstorff, plans to have these annual recaps each year, summarizing key contributions and themes in the documents produced by applied, practicing and public anthropologists.

This same issue features a research article by Timothy de Waal Malefyt, “Understanding the Rise of Consumer Ethnography: Branding Technomethodologies in the New Economy.”

American Anthropologist will also, starting in March 2010, launch a second new feature. The journal will begin reviewing professional reports and other  documents that public, practicing, and applied anthropologists create, but which have not been published by university presses or in other traditional academic venues, and thus have historically been occluded from book review sections.

Because the journal is both widely visible in the discipline and because of its role as an unofficial record of the discipline, I am very excited to see these new efforts featuring the emerging place of practicing anthropologists in our field.

T. J. Ferguson

Anthropological Research, LLC.

Click here to learn more about how to get free access to AAA pubs during November and December.

 AAA members always have free access to AnthroSource as a benefit of their membership. To learn more about becoming an AAA member or to join, visit http://aaanet.org/membership/.

To recommend an AnthroSource subscription to your library, click here. We also offer free subscriptions to Historically Black College and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and First Nation Schools. Contact Dion Dears at ddears@aaanet.org for details.

Filed under: Publications