Focus and Scope
Cultural Anthropology publishes ethnographic writing informed by a wide array of theoretical perspectives, innovative in form and content, and focused on both traditional and emerging topics. It also welcomes essays concerned with theoretical issues, with ethnographic methods and research design in historical perspective, and with ways cultural analysis can address broader public audiences and interests.
As editors of Cultural Anthropology, Anne Allison and Charles Piot will strive to maintain the journal as a forum for innovative anthropological writing that helps shape new directions in the field. In their view, Cultural Anthropology occupies an important niche in what can be thought of as the ecology of anthropological publications, as a journal that actively promotes new approaches - encouraging experimentation with new empirical foci and modes of research practice, with emergent theoretical and political currents, and with new forms of anthropological writing. The journal will remain broad in topical scope, publishing articles that make a number of crosscutting contributions:
Empirical - Cultural Anthropology will continue to publish articles that present new empirical material, collected through traditional, long-term fieldwork, through "multi-sited"; ethnography or through innovative research design that turns new kinds of material into ethnographic data. Traditional topics - religion, gender, political culture - deserve continual attention, as do topics that have come to the center of anthropological concern more recently - science, as practice and culture; technologies and material infrastructures; mediascapes and financescapes; NGOs and corporations; democracy, citizenship and ethics. We are particularly interested in work that actively constitutes new "objects" of ethnographic study, as a way to test and expand the relevance of anthropology in efforts to understand the contemporary world.
Methodological - Anthropologists must continually develop, evaluate, and learn to teach new approaches to anthropological work. Cultural Anthropology should be an important resource, publishing articles that help delineate "the historical moment" at hand; articles that emerge from and discuss fresh approaches to research design and practice; and articles that contribute to robust, expansive conceptions of anthropological knowledge. In particular, the journal should contribute to an ever evolving, theoretically informed conception of ethnography, as both research practice and textual form, with awareness of the ways ethnography has and can continue to be a defining characteristic of anthropological contributions to the humanities, the social sciences, and public debate.
Theoretical - Cultural Anthropology should continue to provide a forum for experimentation with varied, often interdisciplinary, theoretical frameworks within anthropological projects. Work with critical theories of race, sex, class, feminism, and postcolonialism will continue to be important, and in need of new perspective. Continued attempts to work through the implications of poststructuralism and psychoanalysis in empirical projects should be encouraged. At the same time, Cultural Anthropology can promote the development of theoretical perspective through anthropological projects, highlighting the potential of ethnography to operate as "cultural critique." By providing empirical grounds for questioning habitual ways of thinking about the world, ethnography can be used to both criticize and refresh entrenched ideas, among scholars and in broader public debate. In this way, Cultural Anthropology can make important contributions to emergent and politically potent conceptual constructs - of globalization and the so-called network economy; for example; of religion and rationality; of family and values; of science; of "the human" and "life itself."
Political - Cultural Anthropology can provide a forum for articles that tease out the many ways that politics happen, and the many ways that anthropologists can be ethically engaged. In recent years, anthropologists have become increasingly involved in advocacy within anthropological projects, and with the definition and cultivation of "public anthropology." The journal has the potential to contribute to these efforts by offering theoretically informed conceptions of power and "the political" that can orient practical efforts even while foregrounding the often tragic limitations of discourses and institutions through which practical efforts are mobilized. The journal can help re-vitalize ideas about the political import of scholarship itself, through provision of historical perspective on the field; through articulation - for lay and scholarly audiences - of the kinds of knowledge that contemporary cultural anthropology produces; and through analysis of the many ways that knowledge plays out in the world.
Textual - Cultural Anthropology has the potential to promote experimentation with anthropological writing, realizing the promise of ethnography as a genre that is always emergent because always attuned to its substantive content, to its particular historical moment and its audiences, and to the general theoretical claim that form performs, powerfully shaping the effect of a text. Cultural Anthropology can publish articles that would not fit within the standardized genre conventions of other journals, allowing authors to query in practice different ways that article length articulations of anthropological knowledge can come together. Cultural Anthropology will also publish articles about anthropological writing, contributing to a robust reflexivity that fosters awareness of how particular modes of writing authorize people within a field, embed anthropological articulations in broader discursive formations, reach different audiences, and accomplish different kinds of critical work.
Section Policies
Essays
 Open Submissions |
Indexed |
Peer Reviewed |
Peer Review Process
Cultural Anthropology publishes ethnographic writing informed by a wide array of theoretical perspectives, innovative in form and content, and focused on both traditional and emerging topics. It also welcomes essays concerned with theoretical issues, with ethnographic methods and research design in historical perspective, and with ways cultural analysis can address broader public audiences and interests.
Articles appropriate for the journal will differ stylistically, topically and theoretically, but all should make a scholarly contribution of the highest caliber. In a cover email or letter, please assign the manuscript to one of the following categories: accept with minor revisions; revise and resubmit; reject. In the body of your review, please address as many of the following questions as are relevant to the article you are reviewing:
Is the essay empirically rich?
Is the essay richly contextualized, describing, for example, political-economic, technoscientific, and demographic dynamics critical to its topic?
Does the essay use empirical material to enhance theoretical insight?
Are theoretical frameworks sound and clearly articulated?
Does the essay make a novel theoretical contribution?
Does the essay address topics of particular timely relevance?
Does the essay illustrate or otherwise contribute to innovations in research design?
Is the essay textually innovative?
Does the writing meet a high standard of clarity, elegance, and/or compellingness?
What communities of people (both within and beyond anthropology) are likely to be engaged by this essay?
Other Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):
Q: What is the tenure of Anne Allison and Charles Piot as editors of Cultural Anthropology?
A: An editorial field office was established at Duke University in January of 2010, and Anne Allison and Charles Piot began reviewing manuscripts at that time. The first issue they will publish as editors will be Winter 2011, and they will continue as editors through the Fall 2014 issue.
Q: What is the tenure of Mike and Kim Fortun as editors of Cultural Anthropology?
A: An editorial field office was established at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in January of 2006, and the Fortuns began reviewing manuscripts at that time. The first issue they published as editors was be Winter 2007, and they will continue as editors through the Fall 2010 issue. All submissions received on or after January 1, 2010, will be under the editorial tenure of Anne Allison and Charles Piot.
Q: How can I subscribe to Cultural Anthropology?
A: All correspondence regarding membership, including dues payments and change of address, should be sent to:
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Phone: (703) 528-1902 ext.3031
Fax: (703) 528-3546
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Q: How long does the review process usually take?
A: The initial review of new manuscripts typically takes two to four weeks, depending on the journal production schedule and number of current submissions. If a manuscript successfully passes through our internal review process, it is sent out for external reviews. Reviewers are asked to return their reviews in four weeks, but often take longer. Once reviews are completed, a decision is typically rendered within two to four weeks, again depending on the production schedule and other factors. We consider a manuscript overdue for decision five months after initial submission.
Q: How are reviewers chosen?
A: For each manuscript, CA uses a spectrum of 3-5 reviewers. This typically includes some area specialists, as well as one or more scholars who work on related theoretical problems in some other part(s) of the world. Our goal is to identify and publish essays that both make a contribution to particular subfields and are of interest to a broad audience of scholars in cultural anthropology and allied fields.
Q: How long does the review of a revised manuscript usually take, and what is involved?
A: Generally speaking, 4-6 weeks, depending on whether the essay is sent out for a second round of external review. When revised essays come back in, they are given special attention but go through the same process as original submissions. First they go through an internal review process, and if they successfully pass through this, they are sent out for external review. We try to get a mix of new reviewers, and reviewers who read the manuscript previously. Very occasionally (when we have appropriate in-house expertise), we decide to accept an essay without sending it out for another round of external review.
Our process is very competitive given the pool we have to work with so revised essays must not only be responsive to reviews but also stand out among all the essays we have to work with.
Q: Does CA accept manuscripts conditionally upon revisions?
A: No. CA editorial letters may suggest approaches or even guidelines for revisions, but any decision on a revised manuscript is based upon the actual revisions made.
Q: How many manuscripts are received by CA per year? And how many of these are accepted for publication?
A: In 2009, CA received over 190 manuscripts. We generally publish about 20-25 essays per year, so roughly speaking we accept about 1 of 9 manuscripts we receive.
Publication Frequency
Cultural Anthropology is published quarterly.
ISSN: 1548-1360