Anthropological Theory Commons (ATC) is the short-form theory space of the journal Anthropological Theory. It features author interviews, book review essays, and – above all – short-form theory essays (whether stand-alone or int thematic collections). These can act as stand-alone essays or be incubatory projects for longer articles in AT. In terms of short-form theory, ATC is one of the few places where short-form pieces are peer reviewed and given DOIs, and hence more easily valued as scholarship. ATC’s vision is to demonstrate that rigorous scholarship can happen in any length, and moreover that “public-facing” work need not be dumbed down or treated as accessory to the “real scholarship” contained in traditional journals. Moreover, ATC pieces can also act as opportunities for incubating longer projects, such as full-length articles or special issues, that could be pitched to Anthro Theory (or elsewhere) for longer treatment.
In terms of the substance, AT(C) is the only anthropology journal that we know of that does not insist, and even encourages authors to avoid, theorizing directly from/through ethnography. Theory, ofc, should be in conversation with / informed by ethnography/empirics, but we don’t insist that you “use up” those good and precious ethnographic vignettes. So what should a theory piece be? It needs to make an argument or intervention into conceptual domains relevant to anthropology, implicitly taking the form: “we have long thought about some anthropological concept [for example: liminality, governmentality, kinship, indexicality, etc..] in X way; I am going to show and argue that it should be thought of in Y way.”
See our For Authors page for more details on submissions to ATC and contact us at [email protected]. And see here for full article submissions to AT https://journals.sagepub.com/home/anta.
Elliott Prasse - Freeman
Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the National University
Tyler Zoanni
Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University
of Bremen