Received: 20 January 2022 Accepted: 20 January 2022
DOI: 10.1111/aman.13711
F R O M T H E E D I T O R
On publishing good work
Recently, during an invited talk about editing this journal, I was asked,
“Do you have an agenda?” I allowed the question to hang in silence for
a good long while as I considered my answer, which was something like
this: “My agenda, such as it is, is to publish good work.”
What, then, constitutes good work? The honest answer is that this
is very difficult to define, once the editorial guidelines have been met.
Please take careful note of caveat number one, because in my experience
so far, the most common reason for a decision of “reject” at this
journal is because the submission has not sufficiently articulated a contribution
to anthropology. You might be surprised at how many submissions
miss this crucial requirement altogether. (If you have not seen the
journal’s updated guidelines, I encourage you to take some time to go
over them on our website, particularly if you are planning to submit
something.)
Do I have to “like” everything I publish? No, I do not. It’s not about
what I like or what I don’t. That’s what reviewers are for. It’s not about
“liking” for them either. Rather, their task is to assess questions like
these: Is the argument sound? Do the claims and the data have a relationship
that makes sense? Are the citations appropriate? Is the writing
clear? (Once again, I refer you to the submission guidelines.)
One of the great privileges of being an editor-in-chief is having
the opportunity to bring new things to the table. Hewing narrowly
to what is essentially a four-hundred-year-old writing format—
the journal article—seems unnecessarily limiting, particularly now,
when publishing is prioritized for digital platforms. I am very interested
in exploring how publications might take advantage of the flexibility
and creativity that can be exercised in digital spaces. Even with work
that is solely based in the written word, playing with modes of writing
and venturing into topics that are not strictly field-research-based or
high-theory-making can be important contributions to the discipline.
Does American Anthropologist publish ethnographic poetry or fiction?
It might—and that would depend on the individual submission rather
than an existing limit on what kinds of writing are acceptable to the
journal.
What I do know is that writing, and good writing, is something that
the editorial team and I value greatly. Going further, writing that purposefully
moves out of certain scholarly conventions definitely can and
should be the kind of thing this journal publishes. Orin Starn’s article in
this issue is a case in point. “Anthropology and the Misery of Writing”
is a searingly honest account of how hard writing can be. From the outside,
Starn might well appear to be someone who has it easy: a cis white
man who has a PhD from Stanford, tenure at Duke University, several
books, an agent, and a father who was a professor at UC Berkeley. But
it turns out that writing has sometimes left him suicidally depressed.
One thing I appreciate about this piece is Starn’s willingness to expose
his own insecurities and pain. I also appreciate that Starn is very much
aware of his privileges and powers, and he does not whine. One of my
hopes in publishing “Anthropology and the Misery of Writing” is that
others who are experiencing terrible writing times will realize they are
not the first to feel hopeless, to struggle, to be stuck. It’s an important
piece, as well, because it seems to me that a discipline that’s all about
people should probably be willing to address the fact that we ourselves
are people. The personal, perhaps even confessional, mode is certainly
not the only mode, but it can and should be one of them. If that mode
is not for you—no problem. There’s plenty of other content for you to
read, enjoy, learn from, emulate, add to your bibliography.
When I first took over at the journal, I had a lot of questions. I would
ask, “Does the journal do X, Y, or Z?” And then I would look around
for an answer and would realize with horror that I was the one who
needed to come up with the answer. But more and more, coming up
with an answer feels like an opportunity. In this moment, asking ourselves
what journals like American Anthropologist do is important and
necessary. What is the journal’s responsibility to “the discipline”? How
is that responsibility like or unlike a responsibility to people who submit
their work for publication? Even more fraught: What does it even
mean to be publishing now when nearly everything about publishing
is in flux? (That’s a question I’d like to discuss in more detail at a later
date.)
I’ve singled out Starn’s article because it’s an experiment that I hope
encourages others to consider experiments of their own. There is room
in this journal for these kinds of experiments, just as there continues to
be room for the more traditional research articles, commentaries, book
reviews, and obituaries. One added special feature about the March
issue: everything in it is paywall-free for twelve months.
And there you have it. That’s my agenda.
Elizabeth Chin, Editor-in-Chief
ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA 91103, USA.
Am. Anthropol. 2022;124:7. © 2022 by the American Anthropological Association 7wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/aman