Conflicts, Controversies, and Recoveries, 1994–2012
In an essay in their first issue as AA editors, Barbara and Dennis Tedlock mentioned what they called without explanation “terrific tensions in anthropology.” They took what on the surface seemed to be a conciliatory approach, saying that “it is time that we stop fighting and got on with showing our neighbors on both sides that they haven’t even begun to deal with the full range of human diversity and that no one knows how to do that better than anthropologists” (Tedlock and Tedlock 1994a:521). The Tedlocks replaced what they regarded as contentious commentaries and dull research reports with a section called Forum that provided anthropological perspectives on contemporary issues and discussed new ways of presenting anthropological data: “Our intent is to provide a space where anthropologists can discuss and critique educational, multicultural, international, and public policy issues of importance to the discipline as we approach the millennium. Here … will appear work that broadens the very forms of anthropological discourse, whether by extending writing strategies, crossing the boundaries of standard genres of writing, or using graphic means to challenge the dominance of the printed word” (Tedlock and Tedlock 1994a:522).
Despite the Tedlocks’ stated commitment to reducing tensions in anthropology, their first issue seemed to many readers to be a deliberate provocation. The issue began with a poem in the Forum called “ ‘Je Est un Autre’: Ethnopoetics and the Poet as Other.” The other three contributions to the Forum were a piece about cultural studies, a feminist critique of agricultural development, and an essay on why so many primatologists are women. Articles included “The Anthropological Unconscious,” “Embodying Colonial Memories,” and “From Olmecs to Zapatistas: A Once and Future History of Souls.” In subsequent issues, it became clear that the Tedlocks’ version of AA included a much greater proportion of articles using humanistic approaches and a much smaller proportion of articles using scientific approaches than had been characteristic of the journal in the preceding two decades. Quantification just about disappeared from articles in sociocultural anthropology.19
The reaction was immediate, with many anthropologists who had been alienated from AA appreciating the experimentation with new writing forms, the space for humanistic approaches, and the greater attention to contemporary issues and gender. The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a mostly laudatory article called “A Shakeup in Anthropology: New Editors Dramatically Revise a Staid Journal” (McMillen 1994). Other anthropologists were outraged by the transformation of the journal, with the inclusion of poetry being an often-mentioned symbolic flash point. At the annual business meeting of the AAA in November 1994, the new editors were accused of turning away from “the diversity that has always marked our flagship journal.” A resolution disapproving the changes in AA was narrowly defeated, 112 to 86.
The Tedlocks were inconsistent in the tone they took when defending their editorial practices. They mildly and sensibly observed in the AAA newsletter that “we are open to quantitative research in any subfield, but would caution that the possession of objective data [it is interesting that they used the word objective without quote marks] does not exempt authors from the effort to achieve clarity and felicity in their writing, striving for the widest possible readership” (Tedlock and Tedlock 1994b:41). Nevertheless, I cannot help noticing the implication that articles using quantification are sometimes written for a small in-group, ironically a criticism often made of postmodern prose. The Tedlocks were less even-tempered when claiming in AA that one reason for the increase in humanistic articles was that “the very anthropologists who berate us for not publishing enough hard science are also the harshest in their assessments of one another [in peer reviews]” (Tedlock and Tedlock 1995:8). They also complained in the newsletter about rude, sexist behavior of male authors (implicitly of scientifically oriented articles): “It is sad for us to report that the number one problem in the day-to-day running of the journal has been phone calls and e-mail messages in which disappointed or impatient male authors repeatedly attempt to intimidate female members of our office staff. We have started keeping a file of calls that are loud, insulting, and laden with threats to bring in higher authorities. The e-mail messages have been similar, with the addition of four letter words. In our view, such actions constitute harassment, and they will not be tolerated” (Tedlock and Tedlock 1994b:41).
Some criticisms of the Tedlocks were unjustified. Previous editors had neglected certain humanistic approaches to anthropology and paid little attention to public policy, globalization, human rights, gender, and other contemporary issues. Furthermore, the Tedlocks did publish numerous scientific articles—especially in archaeology and biological anthropology—with titles such as “Transportation Innovation and Social Complexity Among Maritime Hunter-Gatherers” and “Biocultural Interaction and the Mechanism of Mosaic Evolution in the Emergence of ‘Modern’ Morphology.” Still, the journal had taken what many, including me at the time, considered to be too much of a turn.20
The AAA’s selection of biological anthropologist Robert Sussman as the next AA editor was doubtless in part an effort to assuage some of criticism of the journal. Sussman resurrected commentaries, research reports, and obituaries. His vision statement in an editorial in his first issue was unpolemic, saying that “empirical research can be both qualitative and quantitative, and the combination of these two approaches are what makes the results of anthropological research unique” (Sussman 1998:606). In the AAA newsletter, Sussman noted that the journal would continue its focus on world issues through a Contemporary Issues Forum that would include cross-disciplinary research in areas such as race and racism, international interdependence and global economics, AIDS research, urban anthropology, deforestation and development, the uses of satellite imagery, feminism, nutrition, and disease.21
To my eyes, the journal under Sussman’s editorship struck a nice balance among anthropological subfields and scientific and humanistic approaches and appropriately included material about contemporary issues. The Tedlocks, however, could not hide their unhappiness with Sussman’s editorial practices and comments, which they interpreted as an unsubtle rebuttal of their work. In 2000, they acerbically observed in an essay in Anthropology News that Sussman’s editorial board members were all from the United States and that submissions were down 31 percent. They also objected to new text on the masthead that replaced the words international journal with flagship journal and referred to the mission of the AAA. According to the Tedlocks, flagship and mission were inappropriate military metaphors used in diplomacy and evangelism.
The Tedlocks even complained about the masthead’s seemingly inoffensive statement that “of particular interest are manuscripts … that develop general implications from exacting substantive research.” They asserted that this was a “rather transparent effort to reassert the hegemony of positivistic over qualitative research.” Making no attempts to be conciliatory, they went on to say that “in our opinion, anthropology will never realize its full possibilities in the post–Cold War era until the positivist camp gives up the idea that qualitative researchers are somehow second-class citizens, or that they should be treated as subversives.”22
In 2000, the AAA decided that AA would once again be sent to all members. Despite this show of support, Sussman resigned the editorship in 2001 because of his unhappiness with the amount of funding the association provided for the journal. Louise Lamphere and Don Brenneis became interim editors of AA for four issues. The journal became longer, with more than 1,200 pages in both 2001 and 2002. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the issues edited by Sussman, Lamphere, and Brenneis was an increase in special sections. A centennial issue marked the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the AAA; forums examined race and racism, urban anthropology, historical archaeology in the United States, and social welfare and welfare reform.
In mid-2002,