OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY

From the American Anthropological Association, to its members:

Dear AAA Members,

I am sharing with you a recent Statement concerning the U.S. Military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) project. The Statement was passed last week by the AAA Executive Board. To facilitate membership discussion on this subject, the AAA is launching a blog and soliciting member comments. The blog includes text of the Executive Board Statement on HTS and links to media articles on the issue:

http://aaanewsinfo.blogspot.com/

Sincerely,

Alan Goodman
President

The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth, or simply the ASA, has produced what it calls ASAonline. I will quote the description of this novel, welcome, and refreshing change at length. ASAonline is,

“a new online publication series to be launched in 2008. The series will specialise in long in-depth articles in any field of anthropology and will be available online on a free-to-read/download basis. All publications in the series will be evaluated by anonymous peer-review.

“The ASA committee has been increasingly concerned that public accessibility to journals of quality has not improved in recent years. While most of our research is publicly funded, results are seldom freely accessible. As academic journals are increasingly being transferred to management by publishers, and costs increase, access to anthropological research has become increasingly privileged. As the committee wish anthropological research to be widely available, we have decided to launch our own online publication series to complement our existing book publications. We also seek to expand our publication range to include digital media and to adopt new technologies. Our aim is to publish in-depth ethnographic work in pamphlet-style with a wide potential readership. Pamphlets will be available to be read online, and a downloadable version will also be available.”

Thanks to a post on Antropologi.info announcing a new issue, free and fully available online, of Radical Anthropology. One can find the downloadable PDF at:
http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/journal_01.pdf

Given a post here a few days ago about “public anthropology” it would seem that there is another brand of anthropology that also complements what is being advocated on this blog, and I hope to soon be in a position to spell out the similarities and differences.

The Radical Anthropology Group describes itself as follows:

“The Radical Anthropology Group has never defined itself as a political organisation. But the implications of some forms of science are intrinsically radical, and this applies in particular to the theory that humanity was born in a social revolution. Many RAG members choose to be active in Survival International and/or other indigenous rights movements. Additionally, some RAG members combine academic research with activist involvement in environmentalist, anticapitalist and other campaigns. In 2001, Camilla Power and Elena Mouriki visited Tanzania and met up with activists in the local indigenous rights movement known as Aang Serian. The following summer, Chris, Ian and Camilla made further friendships with Aang Serian activists in Tanzania. These contacts led to the participation of Aang Serian activists at a London meeting on how to defend the land rights and cultural survival of African hunter gatherers.”

The RAG also makes available a large number of papers, fulltext and for free, on its website at:
http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/publications.htm.