Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
American (or rather United States) anthropology is a vast professional and disciplinary undertaking. It is taught in many high schools and most colleges and universities. Some ninety universities grant around 400 doctoral degrees in anthropology annually. Applied anthropologists outnumber academic anthropologists and hundreds of persons with doctorates in anthropology practise other professions such as law, medicine, public relations and government service.
Over 370 academic anthropology departments, sixty-four museums, forty-two research institutes and eleven government organizations are affiliated within the American Anthropological Association whose membership of over 11,000 represents only a portion of the profession.
Regional, subdisciplinary and area study associations have periodic meetings and produce journals or newsletters. Academic publishers carry extensive lists of anthropological monographs and textbooks. Articles on anthropology appear frequently in newspapers and popular magazines. Fictional anthropologists feature in popular novels, films and cartoons.
American anthropology has a †four-field academic tradition in which *archaeology, *linguistics, *biological and †cultural anthropology maintain debate around certain problems concerning humankind (Silverman 1991). This emphasis developed at the end of the nineteenth century as part of a unifying thrust by universitytrained anthropologists to succeed the disparate amateur interests represented in the government’s †Bureau of American Ethnology, local ethnological and *folklore societies and *museums.
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