Scholarship, Money, and Prose. Michael Chibnik
The editor-in-chief of AA is able to present the latest developments in the field to a large, intellectually-engaged readership. I have long enjoyed learning about new ideas in anthropology by editing and reviewing manuscripts.”
After few sentences about my relevant past experience, I then threw in another platitude-heavy paragraph intended to reassure the search committee of my neutrality in the ongoing science wars in anthropology:
The editor of the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association is committed to publish both articles from the four traditional subfields (archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, sociocultural anthropology) and articles from other disciplinary subdivisions such as medical anthropology, applied anthropology, and public anthropology. Although some articles cross subfield and subdivision boundaries, such pieces are no more central to the journal’s mission than those presenting the best research within particular subfields and subdivisions. The editor of AA should give no priority to any particular subfield, subdivision, or theoretical perspective. Articles employing both scientific and humanistic approaches are deserving of publication, as are those that bridge or combine scientific and humanistic approaches.
The next paragraph was the first with any discernible content. I had long loathed journal articles about obscure topics written in impenetrable and often deservedly mocked academic prose. If I became AA editor, I wanted to try to publish understandable articles about matters of some importance:
AA can only accept a small fraction of the manuscripts submitted for possible publication. In choosing articles for publication, my principal consideration would be to give preference to those submissions that present material that is important and new in the discipline theoretically, methodologically, and empirically. All other things being equal, I would also give preference to articles that demonstrate how anthropological research improves our understanding of issues of practical importance and cultural significance in both the present and past. To the extent possible, the main ideas of articles should be comprehensible to nonspecialists. As editor, I would encourage clear writing and straightforward organization and would discourage the overuse of jargon intelligible to only to those with particular theoretical perspectives. I would emphasize the importance of lucid, logical, evidence-based arguments, and discourage polemical statements in the absence of empirical content.
I then tried to deal with the issue of international scholarship in AA:
American Anthropologist attracts many readers from outside of the United States. The editor of AA therefore needs to encourage the participation of international scholars both as contributors to the journal and as members of the editorial board. Increasing the number of international contributions to the journal is not a straightforward consequence of attracting more submissions from scholars living outside of the United States and providing extra copy editing for non-native speakers of English. The style of writing in scholarly publications in many countries differs somewhat from that typically found in articles in U.S.-based journals such as AA, American Ethnologist, and American Antiquity. This is not an insurmountable obstacle. As editor of Anthropology of Work Review (which comes out twice a year, has only three to five major articles per issue, and focuses to a certain extent on the United States), I have been able in the past three years to publish pieces by scholars from Canada, Great Britain, Argentina, India, Uganda, and Japan.
Even I did not find this persuasive. I had worked hard on these pieces in the Anthropology of Work Review but would not have time for similar amounts of labor at American Anthropologist. Furthermore, these articles might not have been accepted for publication in AA, with its highly critical peer reviewers.
My vision statement went on to praise Tom Boellstorff’s version of AA, noting the mix of articles and the efficient ways in which manuscripts were processed. I said that I would not make major changes in either the content of the journal or the methods for selecting reviewers and evaluating manuscripts. I actually had only a vague idea of what these methods were, but I assumed they worked well because AA was publishing good articles and making timely decisions about whether to publish potential manuscripts. The only changes I suggested were bringing back two AA sections that had been dropped—research reports and commentaries on articles (discussion and debate).
Next I said what I could—which was not much, given my lack of expertise—about ways of increasing AA’s digital presence:
All publications must make changes in response to dramatic developments in digital technology and increases in online readership. Although many (perhaps most) readers of AA interact with the journal primarily by printing out online articles, the journal to date has taken little advantage of digital publication of material aside from what is available in the print version. I would encourage authors of articles and research reports to make more use of the “supporting information” capability already available to present online supplementary material such as photographs, charts, tables, interview transcripts, appendices, and videos. Wiley-Blackwell now provides online space for supporting information free of charge, but this may not be the case with publishers in the future. The extent to which I would be able to use this method of presenting information depends not only on authors’ interest in providing materials but also on financial exigencies.
I knew that this was weak, but I had no idea what more I could say given the unclear support of any initiatives along these lines from the AAA and my university.
The final paragraph explained why at this point in my career, I had the time to devote to what I called “the rewarding task of editing a major journal.” After circulating a draft of the vision statement to friends, I made some minor changes and sent the document off to the search committee along with details about institutional support for the journal. I was glad to see the last of this task.
The Interview
In mid-October, I received an email from the search committee saying that I was one of the finalists for the position as AA editor. At this point, I no longer had to worry about perceived favoritism because of my connections with key members of the committee. Laura Graham and Virginia Dominguez had recused themselves from the search. The brief email listed the members of the search committee and noted that finalists would be interviewed at the annual meeting of the AAA in November in Montreal. I was not then or later told anything more that might help me prepare for the interview. I received no information about who would be at the interview, how long it would last, and who would make the decision about selecting the editor.
I was a bit worried about the interview. Although I had talked to many job candidates at the University of Iowa over years, I had not been on the other side of a serious interview for a position since 1978. When I had been on the job market long ago, I had not done particularly well in interviews. I was reticent in promoting my virtues and tended to be overly candid about my opinions about different types of anthropology. I could not even give concise answers to expectable questions about the topic of my dissertation. Of course, I was much more experienced now and hoped that I would be self-assured and tactful when meeting with the search committee.
The interview took place on the first day of the meetings. I was ushered into a room with about twenty people seated around a large table. In addition to members of the search committee, the interviewers included people from the AAA staff in Washington, D.C., and—with the significant exception of Virginia Dominguez—elected officials of the association. I had met or corresponded with most of the people in the room and knew just about all the rest by reputation.
The meeting was chaired by Lee Baker, an anthropologist who had recently written a book titled Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture (2010). Although I had expected the interview to start off with some softball questions, this turned out not to be the case. Baker immediately asked about my plans concerning diversity at AA. To this day, I have no idea if I took the right approach in my response. I was fairly sure that Baker was mostly concerned about what efforts I would take to encourage the publication of articles and essays by members of underrepresented (in anthropology) minorities in the United States such as African Americans, Latinx, and American Indians. Although I wanted to do this, I had no ideas about what actions I might take beyond what Tom Boellstorff