1. The “use and disuse” of anthropological theory
Tamara Sellers
Bloomsburg University

2. Research goals Deconstruct canons and note diachronic trends and
changes within and between them.
Note trends of Anthropological thinkers and their overall relevancy to the discipline over time.
Understand the “use and disuse” of thinkers and their ideas.
Compare our theory textbook canon of anthropological thinkers to their presence in AnthroSource.

3. Methodology Access AnthroSource
Use theorists from theory textbook as search terms.
Keyword Search: Theorists’ last names.
Collect data on how often:
Theorists are cited
Their works are published
Articles are relevant to the thinker or use their ideas.
Create Excel tables and graphs to illustrate findings.
Create word clouds to show diachronic changes.
Research does not include ALL theorists, only those referenced in the textbook Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History.
Data includes the first 25 of 41 thinkers within the textbook.

4. Digging through databases

5. Digging deeper

6. Keyword search: raw data

9. Keywords from Anthrosource journals 1880-2013
*Word Cloud made with

10. Keyword frequency ( )

12. Keyword frequency ( )
*Word Cloud made with

13. Research results Top Referenced Theorists (1880-2013)
A. L. Kroeber: 211 Articles
Margaret Mead: 160
Franz Boas: 121
Eric Wolf: 72
Leslie White: 71
Top Referenced Theorists ( )
Franz Boas: 22 Articles
Margaret Mead: 15
Eric Wolf: 10
Sherry B. Ortner: 10
Karl Marx: 7
Marcel Mauss: 7
*Images used with permission by F. Warner

14. *Word Clouds made with www.wordle.net
Above: Keyword Frequency ( )
Right: Keyword Frequency ( )
*Word Clouds made with

15. Discussion
Only Margaret Mead & Franz Boas continue to be as cited today as often as in the past.
Father and Mother of the discipline—popular figures
Levi-Strauss has a weak place in the AnthroSource canon.
Eric Wolf, Sherry Ortner, Marcel Mauss, Marx, Malinowski, and Weber occur most often after Mead and Boas
Does our canon text book correspond to the canon AnthroSource?

16. Kroeber occurs often earlier in the canon (mid-century), but then nearly disappears from the canon by “Dean of American Anthropology”