ABSTRACT
Ironically, however, if asked what we actually spend our time doing, aside from grumbling about the burdens of departmental administration, most practicing anthropologists would probably admit that they spend a lot more of their professional lives teaching, writing, preparing and giving conference papers, perhaps collaborating on an exhibition or participating in a film or digital media project. In other words, most anthropologists spend much more of their time communicating anthropology than carrying out anthropological fieldwork. Fieldwork is often the welcome interruption to the everyday business of being an academic, the reward for having written a successful funding proposal or else squeezed into the fast-diminishing quieter times of the academic calendar. While much is written about “doing fieldwork,” little intellectual energy is devoted to reflecting on our media and methods of communication or on how important this aspect of the anthropological endeavor actually is. The objective of this chapter, therefore, is to consider “communicating anthropology” not as an after-the-fact adjunct, but as an essential part of doing anthropology.
