Anthropology Off the Shelf: Anthropologists on Writing - Paperback

by Alisse Waterston (Editor), Maria D. Vesperi (Editor)

In Anthropology off the Shelf, leading anthropologists reflect on the craft of writing and the passions that fuel their desire to write books.

• First of its kind volume in anthropology in which prominent anthropologists and 3 respected professionals outside the discipline follow the tradition of the "writers on writing" genre to reflect on all aspects of the writing process
• Contributors are high-profile in anthropology and many have a strong presence outside the field, in popular culture
• Unique in its format: short essays, revealing and straightforward in content and writing style

Back Jacket

In Anthropology off the Shelf, leading anthropologists reflect on the craft of writing and the passions that fuel their desire to write books. At the core is a critical analysis of the ways in which anthropologists routinely frame, illustrate and contextualize new ideas about culture, and whether their methods facilitate or hinder engagement with the well-informed general reader. The eighteen contributors reveal their inspirations, their concerns about the writing process, their narrative strategies and their imagined audiences, as well as their habits and how they motivate people to read what they write. Each author reflects on the successes and failures of their strategic choices in writing and communicating anthropological subjects in the public sphere.

The reader will find rich but rarely tapped insights into the essential components and commitments of writing public anthropology, and how these writers steer through the difficult issues of racism, sexism, real and imagined critics, and ethical quandaries.

Author Biography

Alisse Waterston is Professor of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Author of Love, Sorrow and Rage: Destitute Women in a Manhattan Residence (1999), she is currently working on two intimate ethnographies: Out of the Shadows of History and Memory: Writing My Father's Life and Narrating Poland.

Maria D. Vesperi is Professor of Anthropology at New College of Florida and a trustee of the Poynter Institute. Author of City of Green Benches: Growing Old in a New Downtown (1986), she is currently completing a book on the relationship between ethnographic narrative and narrative journalism and developing a 150-year social history of a utopian community turned company town.