Letter from the president
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Dear EASA members,
A book which has led to some debate recently, admittedly written by two non-anthropologists, is The Slow Professor by the Canadian academics Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber. Doubtless inspired by similar movements aiming to resist the relentless drive to increased productivity and accelerated lives, the authors point out that certain things can only be done slowly, serious scholarly work being one of them. (This may be true, but don't tell your PhD students and postdocs.)
Slowing down is doubtless a worthy goal under certain neoliberal regimes of production and consumption (at least if you have a secure source of livelihood). In the EASA, we have a stronger commitment to dealing with a different result of the increased academic productivity. As has often been pointed out by our Secretary, Alberto Corsín-Jimenez, in connection with his work on the LIBRARIA open access model, what is often at stake in academic publishing is discoverability. When the number of people who publish grows as fast as the number of papers each person publishes on average, the result is an exponential growth curve. Becoming visible and making one's work noticed has always been a challenge for knowledge workers. In the digital jungle, making yourself discoverable and legible is more difficult than before, but there are also new tools available to enhance our visibility.
A main priority for the present EASA Executive consists in making anthropology more visible in European public spheres. Through LIBRARIA, we have taken a leading role in developing genuinely open access alternatives; we have also taken initiatives to strengthen anthropology in schools and non-university programmes, to enhance our media presence and strengthen ties with non-anthropologists inside and outside academia; and we have written statements and letters of concern in support of colleagues and study programmes which are under pressure or threat from governments. I should also mention that several of the EASA networks do a great job in making anthropology visible and relevant in a larger public sphere, one of the most successful ones currently being the Applied Anthropology network. It organises annual events under the heading ‘Why the world needs anthropologists’. These one-day conferences are well attended and covered by local media.
Presently, we are about to launch a new EASA project aimed to increase the visibility and relevance of anthropologists in Europe. In collaboration with the Max Planck Institute (Halle), we are developing an online directory of European anthropologists. As an EASA member, you will shortly receive an email from us asking whether you wish to register. The objective of the directory, or database, is to make European social anthropologists more easily discoverable to outsiders, such as NGOs, courts of law, journalists or academics working in other disciplines. At the outset, only EASA members are eligible to be included.
Although it represents a different kind of outreach, the EASA book series is also part and parcel of our larger aim to make anthropology matter more. It is a great pleasure for me hereby to welcome Professor Aleksandar Boskovic of the University of Belgrade as the new editor of the EASA book series. Boskovic brings with him a unique competence in world anthropologies and the history of the discipline, and we are looking very much forward to years of collaboration with him.
Finally – now that universities across the continent have reopened after the break, notwithstanding their frustratingly asynchronous rhythms, it seems appropriate to wish you all a productive and meaningful autumn semester, hopefully with a perfect mix of speed and slowness.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
President, EASA
