Cambridge Anthropology
Aims & Scope
Editor-in-chief: Maryon McDonald, University of Cambridge, UK
Relaunched in 2012!
Cambridge Anthropology is an international, peer-reviewed journal committed to publishing leading scholarship in contemporary anthropology. Geographically diverse articles provide a range of theoretical or ethical perspectives, from the traditional to the mischievous or subversive, and aim to offer new insights into the worlds in which we live. The journal will publish challenging ethnography and push hard at the boundaries of the discipline in addition to examining or incorporating fields — from economics to neuroscience — with which anthropology has long been in dialogue. The original remit of the journal, as an in-house publication based at Cambridge University, was to provide a space in which innovative material and ideas could be tested; the new Cambridge Anthropology will build on that tradition to produce new analytical tool-kits for anthropology or to take all such intellectual exploration to task.
Published twice a year, the journal features articles and book reviews in addition to an occasional ‘Reflections and Commentary’ section. Proposals for special issues and review articles are also welcomed.
Subjects: Anthropology
Volume 30 • Issue 1 • Spring 2012
The Spring 2012 issue will be the first issue of the new Cambridge Anthropology and will include a timely piece by Arjun Appadurai on ‘The Spirit of Calculation’, with a response by Keith Hart.
Henrietta Moore and Nick Long will guest edit a special section on the theme of ‘sociality’:
- The question of how and why human beings interact with each other in the distinctive ways that they do remains a cornerstone of contemporary anthropology. Biological anthropologists have proposed the evolutionary origins of the human capacity to be social; psychological anthropologists have set out the developmental processes of acquiring a theory of mind; while theorists such as Callon and Latour have expanded our notion of ‘the social’ to encompass a host of non-human actors. It sometimes seems as if so much has been said about the topic that ethnography has little left to offer.
- Yet new modalities of sociality are arising all the time – both inadvertently and self-consciously. These reflect shifting regimes of political and economic regulation – but they also arise in response to specific innovations in technology, art, and thought, which are themselves informed by theories of sociality from within and beyond the academy.
- Featuring contributions by authors including Henrietta Moore, Jo Vergunst, and Christina Toren, this collection suggests anthropologists might profitably redirect their focus to the fragility and plasticity of sociality – offering a fresh reading of both ethnographic materials and classical social theory.