Year in Review
The Anthropology Book Forum was founded by the American Anthropological Association as an experimental prototype in digital publishing aimed at accelerating the scholarly book review process through the implementation of a totally digital workflow. At the time of its founding, the majority of reviews were published several years after the books they assessed had been released, in many cases, the lag was upwards of five years. Additionally, book reviews were appearing in print journals or hidden behind paywalls, limiting their impact and the readership who could access them. In this vein, the Forum was conceived of as a space that would actively work to reduce barriers to information and engagement, through an entirely Open Access platform with a streamlined digital workflow that focused exclusively on reviews and discussions of newly published work.
What began as a publishing experiment has grown exponentially over the years, with increasing participation from both readers and reviewers. As an open access award-winning journal, committed to a set of principles that aims to reduce barriers to accessibility, the Forum publishes reviews of newly published work in multiple formats every Monday, 52 weeks a year.
As 2024 comes to a close, we’re pausing to reflect on another dynamic year for the Forum. While the number of book reviews published in anthropology journals appear to be decreasing, the Forum has continued to grow, publishing a steady stream of timely, accessible reviews. This year, we celebrated our tenth year and we have seen our readership numbers rise significantly. The Anthropology Book Forum has ~4000 followers on Facebook, with posts having a reach of between 36,000 and 49,000 users. This year, we published 42 reviews, some of which received more than 10,000 views on Facebook alone. Our main website has on average 9,000 monthly visits and over 100,000 visits a year. As we look forward to 2025, we are excited to continue building on this momentum and expand our community of readers, contributors, and collaborators.
Looking Back:
This year was about deepening connections, trying new things, and building on what we’ve learned over the years. Our most read review of the year was Maan Barua’s Plantation Worlds, followed closely by Susan Wright’s and Cris Shore’s Audit Culture. The most-read review of all time remains Jafari S. Allen’s There’s a Disco Ball Between Us. We have also worked to expand engagements with other-than-English titles, as well as publishing reviews in languages other than English). This year, we published a dual review in both English and Spanish (The Ethnographer’s Way / Palabras clave).
At last year’s panel at the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting, the Anthropology Book Forum sparked a lively conversation about the evolving role of the book review in contemporary academic praxis, exploring its value to different actors, the political economy of book reviews in academia, and its pedagogical possibilities. While it was a fruitful discussion on the merits of the original form of the book review, it also became an inquiry into how it could be developed into a more engaging format, fostering different forms of collaboration and interaction. Based on the outcome of last year’s panel and broader discussions with our readership, the Forum hosted a virtual roundtable on “The Book Review in Praxis: Reviewer Meets Reviewed,” this year at the AAA’s in Tampa. This roundtable aimed to further interpersonal exchanges between authors and reviewers, working to develop a ‘reviewer meets reviewed’ format familiar to other social science annual meetings.
Here, we featured four exciting recent works in each subdiscipline of anthropology, and the authors were interviewed as a form of review by a reviewer. These books included Virgin Capital: Race, Gender, and Financialization in the US Virgin Islands by Tami Navarro, Going tactile: Life at the limits of language by Terra Edwards, New Voices in Iranian Archaeology edited by Karim Alizadeh and Megan Cifarelli, and The Trouble With Ancient DNA by Anna Källén. Through engaging conversations, we heard about new lines of research, authors’ experiences navigating the publishing process, and grappling with broader public engagement with their work. Discussion also covered how books are taught in academic institutions, and the need to consider how books are read by different audiences. Another key theme that emerged was that close reading of books remains important, and most authors only experience this kind of in-depth encounter with their work when defending their Ph.D. dissertation. Overall, this roundtable offered a unique lens into how anthropological work is read, discussed, and reviewed.
Looking Ahead:
Next year we look forward to continuing such explorations around what the book review is and can be. We will also be working to expand conversations with publishers, working to understand how publishing processes could be more transparent, especially for early career scholars. Stay tuned for announcements on special issues, our yearly panel at the American Association of Anthropologists Annual Meeting, and new experiments in book review formats.
As always, we couldn’t do this without the support and contributions of so many people. To our readers, reviewers, and publishing partners—thank you for your trust and enthusiasm. Here’s to another year of curiosity, collaboration, and connection in 2025. And as always, if you have ideas about how to improve author and reader engagements here at the Forum, please reach out—we are always keen on improving.
Your editors,
Rasmus Rodineliussen and Emilia Groupp
© 2024 Rasmus Rodineliussen and Emilia Groupp
