Читать книгу Scholarship, Money, and Prose - Michael Chibnik - Страница 9

Chapter 2

A Lot to Learn

Becoming AA Editor

For most of the people I interviewed … journal editorship has been … [an] accidental profession.

(McGinty 1999:13)

During the two months in early 2011 when I was thinking about applying for the AA editorship, I realized that I had not been paying much attention to the journal. When AA arrived in the mail, I would briefly look at the contents, noting any articles and book reviews that might be relevant to my research and teaching. Although I often cited material from AA in my publications and regularly assigned articles from the journal in my courses, I was not particularly knowledgeable about the contents of issues over the past two decades. I therefore decided to look carefully at what had been published in the journal in recent years.

I reached two general conclusions from my examination of past issues of AA. First, there was a significant history of conflict and tension between AA editors and the AAA. These problems sometimes arose because of the behavior of particular editors. But it also seemed to be the case that financial pressures at the AAA could lead the organization’s administrators to compel the editors to be more cost-conscious than they might like. Robert Sussman had quit as a result of such pressures; Fran Mascia-Lees and Susan Lees had seen significant cuts in the size of the journal. I knew vaguely that changes in the financial structure of publishing were affecting scholarly journals and worried that these developments might lead to difficult relations between the AAA and the new editor of AA.

My second general conclusion was that AA was doing well under Tom Boellstorff’s editorship. The new editor would not have to immediately make any significant changes in the journal. I had nothing but admiration for what Tom had been able to do after the sudden departure of Ben Blount, but I had no desire to repeat his experience of taking over a journal in serious trouble.

Although I remained concerned about how well I would get along with the staff at the AAA, I applied for the editorship in mid-April by sending a two-page letter and my curriculum vitae (CV) to Emilia Guevara of the AAA and Laura Graham. The letter included descriptions of my scholarly interests, publications, and editorial and administrative experience. In early June, I received a response from the search committee saying that “your initial statement and CV lead us to believe that you would be a very strong candidate for the position.” I assumed that this meant that I was on a short list of candidates who had passed an initial winnowing. The committee asked for a vision statement, two letters of recommendation, and information about potential institutional support by September 1. The letter was signed by Laura Graham and Virginia Dominguez, the president of the American Anthropological Association. Virginia, a good friend, was a former colleague at Iowa who had moved a few years earlier to the University of Illinois. I wondered if Laura and Virginia would later have to remove themselves from the search committee because of what might be perceived as conflicts of interest.

Before approaching administrators at Iowa, I decided to find out what support was currently provided for the journal. The publication of AA involves the paid positions of managing editor and editorial assistant as well as unpaid volunteer labor such as that provided by manuscript reviewers and the editorial board. Staff at Wiley-Blackwell are responsible for the production of the print and online versions of AA and assist with copy editing and proofreading.

My immediate concern was about support provided by the AAA and the editor’s institution. Tom Boellstorff provided me with the relevant information. The AAA annually paid the salary of the managing editor, $25,000 toward the support of a graduate student editorial assistant, $500 in supplies, and travel by the editor-in-chief to the annual meeting of the association. Each year, Tom received $10,000 toward the support of the editorial assistant, a reduced teaching load, $500 in supplies, and minor accounting support from his institution, the University of California, Irvine.

I next contacted administrators at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Graduate College at Iowa to see what support might be available. I was not sure that they would promise anything. A year earlier, I had been informally contacted by the Society for Applied Anthropology about the possibility of my applying for the editorship of its journal, Human Organization. Although I had been ambivalent about this possibility, I asked Linda Maxson, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, if support would be available if I took on the position. The dean, citing budgetary considerations, offered nothing.

Dean Maxson turned out to be more willing to consider supporting the AA editorship. She called Jim Enloe, the chair of my department, to ask about the prestige of AA. After Jim told her that American Anthropologist was the flagship journal of the AAA, the university promised essentially the same support that Tom was receiving at Irvine. I would get $10,000 a year for a graduate student editorial assistant (the remainder of the salary for the position would be paid by the AAA), money for supplies, and a nice office for the journal. I would also have a reduced teaching load, from two courses in the fall to one.¹

Two friends agreed to write letters of recommendation. Ellen Lewin, a distinguished feminist anthropologist, had been a colleague of mine at Iowa for many years. Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, an economic anthropologist with scholarly interests similar to my own, had occupied the office next to me for a decade before recently moving to the University of North Carolina.

Although lining up organizational support and letters of recommendation had taken some time, it was not difficult. I was not looking forward, however, to the remaining task of writing the vision statement. I understood why the search committee wanted to know what the journal might be like under my editorship. Nonetheless, I was skeptical about the many cliché-filled vision statements that I had seen produced by universities, administrators, and job candidates. The few concrete proposals in these cloying documents were only sometimes carried out. Despite my antipathy for vision statements, I knew that what I wrote might be crucial to the search committee’s decision making. I had several months to produce what would be only a single-spaced document of three to five pages. After some uncharacteristic procrastination, I began mulling over what I might want to say and how I should present my ideas.

The vision statement had to express my enthusiasm for the position, present my approach to editing, indicate any potential changes to the journal, and assure the search committee that I would not do anything that might be troublesome for significant segments of AA’s diverse readership. In addition, I had to address two aspects of the journal that I knew the search committee was especially concerned about. Even though the title of the journal was American Anthropologist, the AAA wanted to attract more contributions to its flagship journal from authors based in places other than the United States. The AAA was also concerned with AA’s use of digital technology. The two other most cited AAA-sponsored journals—American Ethnologist and Cultural Anthropology—were well ahead of AA in their employment of social media. Both journals had well-designed websites that allowed rapid online responses to articles.

I started my statement with some enthusiastic words: “It would be an honor and pleasure to edit American Anthropologist. 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 was already doing. Nonetheless, 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