Volume 17, Number 4 November 2006 PRESIDENT’S LETTER By Donald D. Stull [
[email protected]] University of Kansas Anthropology, or any other subject, cannot avoid the context in which it is done. And we cannot afford to be out of touch with our times. Paul Bohannon n the November 2006 issue of Anthropology News, Elizabeth Tunstall announces that American anthropology suffers from a I“branding problem,” and she reports on preliminary research, which concludes, “the popular perceptions of anthropology are of a field engaged in the scientific study of primitive peoples (exoticism) or the distant past (dirt, bones, and Indiana Jones,” (Anthropology News 47(8): 17, 2006). More than a decade ago, Paula Rubel and Abraham Rosman observed that anthropology finds itself “in a stage of disintegration and fragmentation into myriad subdisciplines, subspecialties, and interest groups, all of which empha- size their differences and uniqueness rather than what they have in common” (Journal of Anthropo- logical Research 50(4):335, 1994). It still does. Anthropology, it would seem, is not only misunderstood by what we like to call “the Other,” but roiling with internecine dissension and turmoil. IN THIS ISSUE Page For several decades now, in fact, anthropology has suffered from what Paul Bohannon called a catastrophe SfAA President’s Letter 1 in its epigenetic landscape (American Anthropologist Obituaries 82(3):512, 1980). An epigenetic landscape is “one that Foster, George 3 changes and moves because of the very activity that Lantis, Margaret 16 goes on within it. A catastrophe takes place when the 2007 Annual Meetings in Tampa 17 epigenetic landscape changes to the point that one of Grappling with Tough Issues 19 its valleys, wherein social action has been flowing, is Rethinking Cosmopolitan 21 blocked or diverted to new courses.” Such valleys are Minding Your Business 24 called chreods.