American Anthropologist & Practicing Anthropology

A message from T. J. Ferguson (Anthropological Research, LLC.):

In November and December 2009, the American Anthropological Association (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.