The Social Network of US Academic Anthropology and Its Inequalities

Abstract

Anthropologists often call attention to the problems posed by social inequality, but academic anthropology also reproduces many of the very inequalities that its practitioners work to critique. Past research on US academic hiring networks has shown evidence of systematic inequality and hierarchy, attributed in significant part to the influence of academic prestige, which is not necessarily a reflection of merit or academic productivity. Using anthropology departments’ websites, we gathered information on all tenured and tenure‐track faculty in PhD‐granting anthropology programs in the United States, totaling 1,918 individuals in all. For each faculty member, we noted their current institution and PhD‐granting institution, which we treated as a “tie” between those academic programs. With those data, we applied both statistical and social network analysis (SNA) methods to explain variation in faculty placement as well as the network's overall structure. In this article, we report on our findings and discuss how they can be used to help rethink academic reproduction in American anthropology. [academia, anthropology, social inequality, hiring networks, social network analysis]

The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019

“…This demands greater attention to what Michel‐Rolph Trouillot (2003, 8) poignantly appraised as the “electoral politics” of the discipline. Nicholas Kawa, José Michelangeli, Jessica Clark, Daniel Ginsberg, and Christopher McCarty (2019) provide a sobering appraisal of the discipline in their research article “The Social Network of US Academic Anthropology and Its Inequalities.” Drawing on a comprehensive data set that includes all tenured and tenure‐track faculty in doctoral anthropology programs in the United States, the authors utilize social network analysis to delineate patterns of inequality and reciprocity in the placement of anthropology PhD graduates. The findings are striking, yet unsurprising: “In US academic anthropology, a small cluster of programs is responsible for producing the majority of tenured and tenure‐track faculty in PhD‐granting programs, with a very select few dominating the network” (Kawa et al.…”

“…The findings are striking, yet unsurprising: “In US academic anthropology, a small cluster of programs is responsible for producing the majority of tenured and tenure‐track faculty in PhD‐granting programs, with a very select few dominating the network” (Kawa et al. 2019, 23) 19 . Their invaluable contribution provides an overdue reminder that the epistemological crisis of anthropology is also one of professional reproduction that remains overdetermined by an elite cast of anthropologists.…”

“…In fact, Kawa et al. go on to single out my current employer, concluding from their data that the University of Chicago's “dominance within the network is unparalleled” (2019, 20). Though I am by no means entitled to all the privileges that this dominance affords as an untenured Black faculty member at a predominantly white institution, I write as a tenure‐track faculty member at a moment when the academic job market is dominated even more so by limited‐term contract lectureships.…”

“…Even as opportunities are expanded for scholars from underrepresented groups in US academe, the call for programs of this sort to “recruit and retain scholars from diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds” constitutes the bare minimum of what is required to genuinely transform the discipline of anthropology (Kawa et al. 2019, 26). While diversity and inclusion efforts are a necessary corrective to the colonial history of the discipline, the selective incorporation of nonwhite scholars into tenure‐track positions does not alone mark the arrival of a decolonizing anthropology (see Harrison [1991] 1997).…”

Divergent Paths to Career Fulfillment in Applied Anthropology

“…Presently, almost 80 percent of those receiving doctorates in anthropology do not get tenure track positions in departments of anthropology (Speakman et al 2018). Moreover, those who do get tenure track positions almost exclusively graduated from a subset of universities such as Harvard and the University of Chicago (Kawa et al 2018).…”