Premium
Anthropology in the news? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate )
Author(s) -
Gusterson Hugh
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
anthropology today
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.419
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-8322
pISSN - 0268-540X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8322.12071
Subject(s) - mainstream , anthropology , sociology , applied anthropology , sociocultural anthropology , militarism , ethnography , neoliberalism (international relations) , media studies , four field approach , history , social science , anthropology of art , politics , political science , law , art history , contemporary art , performance art
It is part of our informal culture of anthropology to complain about the way the media portray us, and yet there has been little systematic analysis of media representations of anthropology. I look at stories about anthropologists, stories that quote anthropologists and opinion pieces by anthropologists over a six‐month period in The New York Times . I conclude that biological anthropology and archaeology are over‐represented in these stories, and that the media portrays anthropologists primarily as authorities on exotic others abroad, or ritual behaviour at home. Anthropologists who write about neoliberalism and militarism have had difficulty getting into the high‐end mainstream media, where it is economists rather than anthropologists who are seen as experts on general human nature.