Editorial: The solidarity imperative and changes atEthos

Abstract

Journals are the product of intellectual communities; a publication's health mirrors the field it represents. Current developments in the human sciences, especially the replication crisis and growing awareness of problems with cross‐cultural generalization, create opportunities for psychological anthropologists to speak to a broader audience within academia. However, to take advantage of these opportunities, we must write with this potential audience in mind, an academic public that does not share the same theoretical vocabulary, epistemological standards, or methodological principles. Academic publishing has been struggling with the burdens imposed by the pandemic and scandals around misuse of power brought to light in the last few years. At the same time, new models for performance management only increase the pressure falling on editorial staff. This editorial reflects on the necessity of solidarity, innovation, and community investment in a journal to maintain viability in the new publishing landscape.

Ethnography vs. zombie methodologies

“…Roseberry was worried about decreasing interest in political economy and the rejection of structural analysis, but the same could be said today about psychologically adjacent anthropology. Encouraging more anthropologists to write to influence the human sciences would require lifting the "Geertzian foreclosure" on psychological-level theory in our field (Molino, 2004, p. 22; see also Downey, 2023), but it could also help spur our theoretical ambitions and discourage intradisciplinary involution (Bunzl, 2008). If we write only for each other, ferociously engaging our internecine intellectual skirmishes touched off especially since the publication of Writing Culture (Clifford & Marcus, 1986), we risk producing obscure texts with severely limited reach.…”