Editorship, Value, and American Anthropology

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST IN FOCUS: AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY Editorship, Value, and American Anthropology Tom Boellstorff Editor-in-Chief OPENING T he overall framing for this collaborative article is Amer- ican Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association, my experiences over five years of editorship, and the experiences of the associate editors re- sponding to my thoughts here. Together, we are here using American Anthropologist as an intimate test case with which to think through trends in anthropology and the academy. In these opening thoughts, I set out two key issues for discus- sion that are often overlooked in debates about the futures of publishing. The first of these involves the editor subject position. The work of editorship is often ignored or sidelined, partic- ularly when editors are construed as gatekeepers. How can we rethink the subject position of “editor” with regard to anthropological knowledge production? How does the edi- tor role interface with that of ethnographer, author, advisor, theorist, teacher, advocate, and colleague? The second issue concerns journals in relation to schol- arly community. What new configurations do we see in re- gard to the disciplining and undisciplining of anthropology, within and beyond the academy? What are the consequences of these configurations for ethnographic and theoretical col- laboration beyond “anthropology” proper, and for fieldwork methods more generally? How can we recuperate a destabi- lized and critical notion of the “American” in contemporary anthropology? What are the “American” legacies and trajec- tories of American anthropology and American Anthropologist? What might be new roles for the article genre in anthropo- logical knowledge production? THE EDITOR SUBJECT POSITION With regard to the question of the editor subject position, I have come to realize the degree to which the work of editor- ship is misunderstood and underappreciated. Few scholars go to graduate school seeking a career as an editor; indeed, it is possible to imagine a scholarly career that never in- cludes editing. Anthropologists are no exception to this. We tend to see our work as oscillating between fieldwork and other forms of data collection, writing, and teaching. Most anthropologists will never edit a journal: more will serve on editorial boards, edit a book, and so on, but many will participate minimally in editing even at that level. Indeed, it bears noting that many journals, even the most established, often struggle to find editors. One reason for this is that editing is simply accorded far less prestige than research. I was lucky to have a very supportive department and dean at Irvine, but some editors do face difficulties in getting their editing work counted for promotion. Research counts far more than service in most forms of assessment, and journal editing is usually classed as service work in the eyes of colleagues and administrators. Because the work of editing slows one’s rate of research and publication, this means that, in effect, editors take a pay cut for the work they do. This is exacerbated by the fact that most editorships provide no salary whatsoever. These financial and bureaucratic disincentives shape a broader context in which editing has long been demeaned. This has taken several forms. One is the idea that editors damage the work of authors. A well-known example of this is Henrietta Bowdler (1750–1830), whose The Family Shakspeare [sic] (1807), with about ten percent of the text removed to expurgate anything “immoral,” was the inspira- tion for the term bowdlerize. Another is the idea that editors are partisan gatekeepers. A third is that editors are failed authors. While most academics would bristle at the adage “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,” I suspect fewer would protest the phrase “those who can’t write, edit.” Now, I would never deny that editors are gatekeepers. Most journals receive more manuscripts than they can pub- lish, often many times more than they can publish. Editors do also affect the work that appears in print but rarely in a “bowdlerizing” sense, particularly not without the knowl- edge or consent of the author. But in my own experience and from interacting with many editors during my editorship, I have come to understand that questions of gatekeeping and intervention miss the point in regard to the core work of editing and the aspects of that work that editors find most rewarding. What I find particularly fascinating about the editor subject position is that it is a position of laterality, of being alongside the work of another. Editing is a form of intel- lectual work in which you take on the conceptual project of another scholar and work to increase the persuasive and explanatory power of that project. When you are an editor, in a powerful way it’s not about you. It is about a relation of c 2012 by the American Anthropological AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 114, No. 4, pp. 567–570, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01485.x