Who Gets to Be an Author?

Abstract

Who gets to be an author in contemporary anthropology and who does not? How do both questions about authorship expose problems surrounding academic labor and scholarly knowledge production, which have become normative features of the discipline? This essay examines how inherited logics and practices of anthropological authorship allow for the accumulation of intellectual capital for select academic laborers while excluding others, most notably field research assistants and students. Among university faculty, intellectual capital tends to concentrate in the hands of an elite few who are immunized from the demands imposed on most other academics, including unstable employment conditions and heavy course loads. This essay considers how anthropological scholars of labor can challenge the reigning logics of anthropological authorship through the adoption of new methods while also working to confront the neoliberal audit culture in higher education, which has created unsustainable demands for the majority of academic laborers.