''American Anthropologist'' is the flagship journal of the
American Anthropological Association (AAA), published quarterly by
Wiley
Wiley may refer to:
Locations
* Wiley, Colorado, a U.S. town
* Wiley, Pleasants County, West Virginia, U.S.
* Wiley-Kaserne, a district of the city of Neu-Ulm, Germany
People
* Wiley (musician), British grime MC, rapper, and producer
* Wiley Mil ...
. The "New Series" began in 1899 under an editorial board that included
Franz Boas,
Daniel G. Brinton, and
John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He ...
. The current editor-in-chief is Elizabeth Chin (ArtCenter College of Design).
The journal publishes research articles from all four subfields of anthropology as well as book reviews and obituaries, and includes sections on Public Anthropologies, Multimodal Anthropologies, and World Anthropologies. The journal also maintains a website with essays, virtual issues, teaching resources, and supplementary material for print articles.
Past editors
F. W. Hodge (1899–1910)
John R. Swanton
John Reed Swanton (February 19, 1873 – May 2, 1958) was an American anthropologist, folklorist, and linguist who worked with Native American peoples throughout the United States. Swanton achieved recognition in the fields of ethnology and et ...
(1911)
F. W. Hodge (1912–1914)
Pliny E. Goddard (1915–1920)
John R. Swanton
John Reed Swanton (February 19, 1873 – May 2, 1958) was an American anthropologist, folklorist, and linguist who worked with Native American peoples throughout the United States. Swanton achieved recognition in the fields of ethnology and et ...
(1921–1923)
Robert H. Lowie (1924–1933)
Leslie Spier
Leslie Spier (December 13, 1893 – December 3, 1961) was an American anthropologist best known for his ethnographic studies of American Indians. He spent a great deal of his professional life as a teacher; he retired in 1955 and died in 1961.Rob ...
(1934–1938)
Ralph Linton
Ralph Linton (27 February 1893 – 24 December 1953) was an American anthropologist of the mid-20th century, particularly remembered for his texts ''The Study of Man'' (1936) and ''The Tree of Culture'' (1955). One of Linton's major contributio ...
(1939–1944)
J. Alden Mason (1945–1948)
Melville J. Herskovits (1949–1952)
Sol Tax
Sol Tax (30 October 1907 – 4 January 1995) was an American anthropologist. He is best known for creating action anthropology and his studies of the Meskwaki, or Fox, Indians, for "action-anthropological" research titled the Fox Project, and fo ...
(1953–1955)
Walter R. Goldschmidt (1956–1959)
Edward H. Spicer (1960–1962)
George D. Spindler (1963–1966)
Ward H. Goodenough (1967–1970)
Laura Bohannan
Laura Bohannan (née Laura Marie Altman Smith), (1922 – March 19, 2002) pen name Elenore Smith Bowen, was an American cultural anthropologist best known for her 1966 article, "Shakespeare in the Bush." Bohannan also wrote two books during the ...
(1971–1973)
Robert A. Manners (1974–1975)
Richard B. Woodbury (1976–1978)
David L. Olmsted (1979–1981)
H. Russell Bernard (1982–1985)
Thomas C. Greaves (1985–1986)
H. Russell Bernard (1986–1989)
Janet Keller (1990–1993)
Barbara Tedlock
Barbara Helen Tedlock (born September 9, 1942) is an American cultural anthropologist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Buffalo. Her work explores cross-cultural understanding and communication of d ...
&
Dennis Tedlock
Dennis Ernest Tedlock (June 19, 1939 – June 3, 2016) was the McNulty Professor of English and Research Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
He received his Ph.D. in 1968 from Tulane University. In 1986, he ...
(1993–1997)
Robert Sussman
Robert Wald Sussman (July 4, 1941 – June 8, 2016) was an American anthropologist and professor at Washington University in St. Louis. His research concerned the evolution of primate and human behavior, and he was interested in race as a social ...
(1998–2001)
Susan Lees & Fran Mascia-Lees (2001–2005)
Ben Blount (2005–2007)
Tom Boellstorff
Tom Boellstorff is an anthropologist based at the University of California, Irvine. In his career to date, his interests have included the anthropology of sexuality, the anthropology of globalization, digital anthropology, Southeast Asian studies ...
(2007–2012)
Michael Chibnik (2012–2016)
Deborah A. Thomas (2016–2020)
Four-field approach
The four main subfields of anthropology include cultural, linguistic, archeology, and biological/physical. Sometimes applied anthropology and public anthropology are added as additional subfields.
Among the journals published by the AAA, ''American Anthropologist'' is the only one that follows the "four-field" approach, publishing articles from the four main subfields of anthropology. Proponents of the four-field approach see ''American Anthropologists broad scope as important to maintaining disciplinary unity, while critics have expressed serious reservations about this aim, and criticize pressures since the 1970s against editors and works that do not subscribe to four-field holism as an ideal for anthropological scholarship.
In 2010, then editor-in-chief
Tom Boellstorff
Tom Boellstorff is an anthropologist based at the University of California, Irvine. In his career to date, his interests have included the anthropology of sexuality, the anthropology of globalization, digital anthropology, Southeast Asian studies ...
proposed that ''American Anthropologist'' be viewed as an "interdisciplinary" journal, arguing that the goal should be "to present the best work in 'anthropology'—as defined in the broadest possible sense. That certainly includes work that speaks across subdisciplines in some manner, often by integrating methods, problematics, and relevant literatures from more than one subfield. However, it also includes work that is not invested in the four-field concept and presents itself as, say, cultural anthropology or archaeology, with no reference to a four-field vision of 'the discipline.'"
Notes
References
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External links
American Anthropologist website
{{Authority control
Anthropology journals
Pre-Columbian studies
Publications established in 1888
Mesoamerican studies journals
Wiley-Blackwell academic journals