The Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008 shows what we bloggers have done – anthropology has both a public voice and a powerful presence on the Internet. In this post I want to speak to that presence, building on The “Best of Anthro 2008” Prizes and the descriptions of the posts that anthro bloggers selected as their most popular and their best.

The prizes were to get attention, such an important feature of Internet buzz (and it worked!); the descriptions for power browsing. Here I want to bring greater focus on why anthropology blogging is relevant. I hope my summary of the efforts of many helps you explore, learn, enjoy, teach, muse, argue, and share.

In reading over the posts again, I came up with seven categories. They are: (1) Public Relevance; (2) Anthropological Vision; (3) Being Human; (4) Controversy, Commentary and Critique; (5) Empiricism and Scholarship, (6) Language; and (7) Blogging. I’ve highlighted illustrative posts in each category, then provided a list of other good examples. I will cover the first three categories in this post and the other four in part two.

I should say that this is my own subjective reading of the posts, my own way of thinking through them. Someone else would surely do it differently; this is just my attempt at highlighting why anthropology blogging is important.

Public Relevance

Why should anthropology matter to people reading and browsing out there? Here are posts that address issues of public concern, and that show that anthropology can make a difference in myriad ways.

Continue reading “The Relevance of Anthropology – Part 1 on the Best of Anthro Blogging 2008”