The American Anthropologist

''American Anthropologist'' is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), published quarterly by Wiley. The "New Series" began in 1899 under an editorial board that included Franz Boas, Daniel G. Brinton, and John Wesley Powell. 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

Frederick Webb Hodge, F. W. Hodge (1899–1910)

John R. Swanton (1911)

Frederick Webb Hodge, F. W. Hodge (1912–1914)

Pliny Earle Goddard, Pliny E. Goddard (1915–1920)

John R. Swanton (1921–1923)

Robert Lowie, Robert H. Lowie (1924–1933)

Leslie Spier (1934–1938)

Ralph Linton (1939–1944)

John Alden Mason, J. Alden Mason (1945–1948)

Melville J. Herskovits (1949–1952)

Sol Tax (1953–1955)

Walter Goldschmidt, Walter R. Goldschmidt (1956–1959)

Edward H. Spicer (1960–1962)

George Spindler, George D. Spindler (1963–1966)

Ward Goodenough, Ward H. Goodenough (1967–1970)

Laura Bohannan (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 & Dennis Tedlock (1993–1997)

Robert Sussman (1998–2001)

Susan Lees & Fran Mascia-Lees (2001–2005)

Ben Blount (2005–2007)

Tom Boellstorff (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 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.'"

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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