Writing is crucial to anthropology, but which genres are anthropologists expected to master in the 21st century? This book explores how anthropological writing shapes the intellectual content of the discipline and academic careers. First, chapters identify the different writing genres and contexts anthropologists actually engage with. Second, this book argues for the usefulness and necessity of taking seriously the idea of writing as a craft and of writing across and within genres in new ways. Although academic writing is an anthropologist’s primary genre, they also write in many others, from drafting administrative texts and filing reports to composing ethnographically inspired journalism and fiction.
Table of Content
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Introducing the Anthropologist as Writer: Across and Within Genres
Helena Wulff
PART I: THE ROLE OF WRITING IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL CAREERS
Chapter 1. The Necessity of Being a Writer in Anthropology Today
Dominic Boyer
Chapter 2. Reading, Writing, and Recognition in the Emerging Academy
Don Brenneis
Chapter 3. O Anthropology, Where Art Thou? An Auto-Ethnography of Proposals
Sverker Finnström
Chapter 4. The Craft of Editing: Anthropology’s Prose and Qualms
Brian Moeran
Chapter 5. The Anglicization of Anthropology: Opportunities and Challenges
Máiréad Nic Craith
PART II: ETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
Chapter 6. The Anthropologist as Storyteller
Alma Gottlieb
Chapter 7. Writing for the Future
Paul Stoller
Chapter 8. Life-writing: Anthropological Knowledge, Boundary-Making, and the Experiential
Narmala Halstead
Chapter 9. Chekhov as Ethnographic Muse
Kirin Narayan
PART III: REACHING OUT: POPULAR WRITING AND JOURNALISM
Chapter 10. On Some Nice Benefits and One Big Challenge of The Second File
Anette Nyqvist
Chapter 11. The Writer as Anthropologist
Oscar Hemer
Chapter 12. Writing Together: Tensions and Joy between Scholars and Activists
Eva-Maria Hardtmann, Vincent Manoharan, Urmila Devi, Jussi Eskola and Swarna Sabrina Francis
PART IV: WRITING ACROSS GENRES
Chapter 13. Fiction and Anthropological Understanding: A Cosmopolitan Vision
Nigel Rapport
Chapter 14. On Timely Appearances: Anthropology, Art, Literature
Mattias Viktorin
Chapter 15. Digital Narratives in Anthropology
Paula Uimonen
Chapter 16. Writing Otherwise
Ulf Hannerz
Index
About the author
Helena Wulff is Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Among her publications are the monographs Ballet across Borders (1998, Bloomsbury), Dancing at the Crossroads (2007, Berghahn), and Rhythms of Writing (2017, Bloomsbury).
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