“Public Anthropology” in Its Second Decade: Robert Borofsky's Center for a Public Anthropology

Abstract

ABSTRACT For more than a decade, Robert Borofsky has encouraged anthropologists to pursue a “public anthropology.” In this time, he has played a key role in a larger movement that has seen increasing numbers of anthropologists attempting to engage with and serve the needs of public audiences outside academia. In this review essay, I review Borofsky's work through his Center for a Public Anthropology, including the center's website and its four major projects: The Anthropology Journal Archive; the Community Action Website Project; the California Series in Public Anthropology; and the Public Outreach Assessment of anthropology doctoral programs. I discuss the results and significance of the center's projects, identifying important innovations that Borofsky has achieved in anthropological teaching, scholarship, academic publishing, and the structure of academic anthropology. The review also offers constructive criticism of Borofsky's efforts and suggestions for advancing the center's projects and his vision for a public anthropology. [public anthropology, applied anthropology, public engagement, academia, universities]More than a decade has passed since Robert Borofsky asked whether anthropologists should “laugh or cry” over the discipline's place in the public sphere (Borofsky 2000). At the time, Borofsky was starting to receive widespread attention—both laudatory and critical—for calling on anthropologists to pursue a “public anthropology.”1 Many embraced his call as a much‐needed antidote for a discipline many thought had become insular, often incomprehensible, and generally irrelevant to the lives and struggles of most people. Others were angered that Borofsky's vision for a public anthropology seemed to overlook a long tradition of anthropologists working beyond the academy, while perpetuating a hierarchy between academic and applied anthropology (e.g., Singer 2000).Amid the debates, we have witnessed the creation of classes in public anthropology, master's and doctoral programs in public anthropology (including one in my department), public anthropology conferences, numerous conference panels, a lecture series, an institute, a working group, a fellowship, a department initiative, and, of course, this AA section, all named for “public anthropology.” Although the debates about the name are beyond the scope of this article, given Borofsky's seminal role in what has become a broader movement of anthropologists engaging in new kinds of work outside academia, this section's coeditors believed it important to offer a detailed review of Borofsky and his Center for a Public Anthropology.