Scholarship, Money, and Prose. Michael Chibnik
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I quickly responded by discussing the different meanings of diversity with respect to AA. There needed to be diversity among anthropological subfields, theoretical approaches, topics of research articles, and journal sections. The AA editor also had to pay attention to diversity among contributors with respect to nationality, gender, and underrepresented minorities.2 I said that I would appoint an editorial board with all these types of diversity in mind and would reach out to various subsections of the anthropological community in my efforts to solicit contributions to the journal. Baker did not look particularly happy with this answer and later on asked me specifically about U.S. minorities. I knew that it was time to trot out platitudes and gave a pleasant-sounding answer notably lacking in specifics.
Most of the rest of the questions were straightforward inquiries about matters covered in my vision statement. I did my best to reassure the committee that I was not planning drastic changes in the journal. There were, however, a series of questions about something I had hardly thought about. Several people wanted to know what I would do to further incorporate biological anthropology into AA. I was surprised by this line of inquiry because Tom Boellstorff had published a number of articles in this subfield. I responded briefly that biological anthropology would continue to be an important part of the journal.
After the interview was over, I realized that these questions were related to a recent skirmish in the seemingly never-ending science wars. In 2010, the AAA had made a change in its long-term plan. The introduction to this document had previously stated that the association’s goal was “to advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects.” The AAA executive board changed this to “the purposes of the association shall be to advance the understanding of humankind in all its aspects.” The word science was also removed from two other places in the plan. When questioned about this, Virginia Dominguez had replied—in my view sensibly—that the changes had been made in order to include anthropologists who did not locate their work in the sciences. This was not how many scientifically oriented anthropologists interpreted the changes. They saw them instead as emblematic of what they perceived as the increasing dominance of humanistic and postmodern approaches in anthropology. Biological anthropologists, never all that enthusiastic as a group about the AAA, were especially unhappy. The controversy was covered in some depth in publications such as the New York Times (Wade 2010), Inside Higher Education (Berrett 2010), and Psychology Today (Joyce 2010). The search committee did not want an editor who would adopt policies that would further alienate biological anthropologists and lead to more unfavorable publicity for the AAA.
When I rehashed the interview in the months that followed, the questions about diversity worried me more than the inquiries about biological anthropology. In retrospect, this was a mistake. While I was never criticized about diversity during my years editing the journal, complaints from biological anthropologists resulted in some of my most difficult moments.
The interview lasted no more than twenty-five minutes. I left the room thinking that I had not done particularly well. I told my friends that I probably would not be offered the position and began to think about other work-related ways to spend the next several years. The executive board of the AAA was to select an editor later in the meeting, which lasted until Sunday. On Tuesday, Leith Mullings, who had just succeeded Virginia Dominguez as AAA president, called to offer me the position. Although I eventually learned the name of one of the other finalists (interestingly, a biological anthropologist), I never found out who the other two were. Years later, someone at the interview told me that one reason I was offered the position was the search committee’s confidence that I would not have problems reliably producing the journal. The executive board had evidently agreed with Tom Boellstorff about the importance of bread-and-butter qualifications.
The Chronicle of Higher Education contacted me by email asking about my plans for the journal. Not wanting to stir up controversy, I responded with some bland statements from my vision statement. The resulting paragraph in the Chronicle was reassuringly free of anything likely to cause problems for me or the AAA.
Getting Started
During the seven months between being offered the position and taking on the editorship, I was busy with work on the journal. In addition to setting up an editorial board, I had to find a managing editor, an editorial assistant, and editors for the sections on public anthropology, visual anthropology, book reviews, and obituaries. As I took on these tasks, I learned a lot about work organization at the journal and some of the logistical problems associated with editing AA.
I had no trouble finding a good managing editor. Mayumi Shimose had held the position for more than a decade and wanted to continuing working for AA. However, the structural position of AA within the AAA made it surprisingly difficult to keep Mayumi on.
All but two of the more than twenty AAA-sponsored journals are affiliated with sections of the association such as the American Ethnological Society, the Society for Medical Anthropology, and the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. (It is difficult to give a precise figure for the number of AAA journals because periodically some are added and others disappear.) The sections are primarily funded by member dues and a complicated profit-sharing arrangement between the AAA and Wiley-Blackwell. Each section that publishes a journal receives an amount of money determined by a formula based on the revenue generated by the title and the number of downloads of articles from an AAA site called AnthroSource. Journal editors receive funds from this allocation from the treasurer and other officials of their section. For example, when editing Anthropology of Work Review, I received funds for a copy editor from the Society for the Anthropology of Work.
American Anthropologist and the much smaller Anthropology News are the only AAA-sponsored journals not affiliated with a section. In order for AA editors to obtain funds and other support for the journal aside from that provided by their institution and Wiley-Blackwell, they must negotiate with the director of publishing of the AAA. During most of my editorship, this position was held by Oona Schmid. I knew from my time editing Anthropology of Work Review that Oona was cautious about spending even small amounts of money. We had exchanged lengthy emails about funds for covers and financial penalties for the Society for the Anthropology of Work if the journal exceeded its page limits.
Each year, the AA editor submits a budget for approval by the AAA that includes items such as partial funding for the editorial assistant, travel for the editor to the annual meeting, and miscellaneous supplies. When Tom Boellstorff edited AA, the AAA gave money to the University of California, Irvine to hire Mayumi Shimose and provide her with some benefits. I never did fully understand the arrangement at Irvine, where Mayumi was hired as a part-time employee of the university. The costs for hiring Mayumi through the University of Iowa turned out to be considerably higher than they had been at Irvine. Oona, who did not want to spend this extra money, decided to see if Mayumi would be willing to work freelance for a somewhat higher salary, forgoing benefits. Because Mayumi had medical benefits through her husband’s job, she somewhat reluctantly agreed to this arrangement.
As the former chair of the Labor Relations Committee of the AAA, I was not happy to hear about this. This arrangement was an example of the outsourcing of work increasingly common in industrial societies. The Labor Relations Committee had strongly opposed the terrible working conditions often associated with outsourcing for adjunct faculty. In this particular case, I was also worried about the precedent set by the agreement. Future managing editors might not have Mayumi’s access to medical benefits. Although I did not say anything at the time, I should have.
Hiring an editorial assistant was straightforward. Brandi Janssen, one of my advisees, had just started to write her doctoral thesis on the production and sale of local food in eastern Iowa. Brandi is smart, reliable, and well organized. She was glad to have the position, which offered flexible hours and work that could be done from home.3