Comments on: The Possibility of Anthropological Micropublishing

By: Caroline osella

Caroline osella — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 11:04:14 +0000

In reply to Richard Daly. Got a link to your novel? I'm interested to read it.

By: dmf

dmf — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 00:02:19 +0000

this was interesting https://jhiblog.org/2022/02/16/diy-epistemologies-histories-and-futures-of-publishing-in-the-humanities/

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 20:49:17 +0000

Thanks for this post Jeremy. It’s good to see this conversation here. You wrote about the fact that a lot of this work is not reward (or even recognized) by the academy. I think about those sorts of issues and barriers a lot. I used to think we needed to make this other kind of writing/publishing visible or valuable within those systems…but maybe the way to go is just doing it anyway and letting it live outside of all that. Then the question is who that writing/publishing would be for? Who is the audience? But that may be missing the point. Maybe the point is to just write and publish in these other ways for the sake of doing it.

By: DJ

DJ — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 01:09:11 +0000

great post–there is a bit of this kind of activity around the taiwanese anthro blog (if i can promote the work of my colleagues here) guavanthropology, which every few years publishes in book form a selection of blog posts from their site. it’s in mandarin, so maybe not accessible to many of the readers here; yet, it’s a project that has a bit of traction in the small but active anthropology community here, which fortunately also includes many people outside of universities. on other fronts, your questions about equity in micro-publishing are also really relevant. to get at these problems might require rethinking the publics of anthropological publishing as well as those editing and writing

By: dmf

dmf — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 21:32:11 +0000

In reply to Mitch Allen. "Experimental work rarely secures large audiences needed to pay overheads for large publishers." I get yer point here but doubt that there are such things as large audiences for ethnographic/anthro work, how academic libraries came to be a market is worth looking into but demand by readers isn't likely a significant part of the answer, also Mol (see above) and others are working on forms of publishing that actually allow for public reader input/reaction as part of their professional and their methodological ethos.

By: Mitch Allen

Mitch Allen — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 20:10:21 +0000

Anthropologists have always had DIY presses (e.g. Sahlin’s Prickly Paradigm Press) and still have that capability today. The limitations, as you note, are the resources, both financial and paid & unpaid labor. Even larger limitations are the lack to incentives– an academic reward system that ignores these projects and the inability of scholars to distribute these experimental projects widely within the field. That is why there are professional publishers. With the globalization of the anthropological community and the increasing complexity of the online system of circulating metadata so that scholars know these things exist, the most efficient ways of do so have been through organizations like the large publishers. Still, having been an anthropology editor/publisher for 40 years and knowing most of the other ones, I don’t know any of them who wouldn’t encourage experimental projects. In larger organizations, there are filters that make these harder to approve. Experimental work rarely secures large audiences needed to pay overheads for large publishers. But I did my share of experimental works and most other modest-sized publishers and university presses have as well. I would encourage you to try them before engaging in a frustrating attempt to replicate the system already set up to circulate innovative anthropological work.

By: dmf

dmf — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 01:49:02 +0000

In reply to dmf.

one can hope.
https://ethnomarginalia.com/

By: Jeremy Trombley

Jeremy Trombley — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 23:16:17 +0000

In reply to dmf. Hey, glad to hear from you! That’s great - I must have seen this at some point and forgotten. It’d be great to see more experiments like it!

By: dmf

dmf — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 23:10:20 +0000

hey JT long time no blog exchange, check out what Annemarie Mol and co. have done with:
https://www.matteringpress.org/

By: Richard Daly

Richard Daly — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 09:12:36 +0000

Great idea, micro publishing the multitude of ethnographic materials. I have an ethnographic novel which grew out of a doctorate in the previous century. It could be a talking point for students in anth courses, in the rare few places where there is time for discussion rather than cramming for exams and IQ scores for jobs jobs jobs.