In 2011, prominent introductory anthropology textbook author
Conrad Kottak teamed up with Lisa Gezon to produce the new
“magazine style” CULTURE. Anthropology definitely has some
branding woes–see Anthropology is the worst college major–and
Kottak is well known for keeping a finger on the pulse of pop
culture. But can a glossy magazine textbook, doubling down on
culture in anthropology, help the anthropology brand? Culture is
one of the ideas most associated with anthropology, but culture
in anthropology has also been fiercely critiqued. Using a
splashy textbook to double down on culture in anthropology is
problematic, not so much because it ignores the critique of
culture in anthropology, but because the terminology of culture
hardly needs promoting in the world-at-large: culture is already
everywhere. Doubling Down on Culture in Anthropology–Why Now?
Why might textbooks now be emphasizing culture in anthropology?
Two immediate possibilities come to mind. The first and more
generous possibility is as a respo