What is the point of social-cultural anthropology? Why create ethnography? How is it a meaningful part of contemporary social and political life? In 2024 American Ethnologist will be celebrating its 50^thanniversary. To mark this occasion, we are planning a special anniversary issue examining the roles that anthropological theory, ethnography, and even ethnology play in producing knowledge that is essential to critically-engaged scholarship and to deepening our understandings of contemporary life. We invite anthropologists  – working in or out of academia, junior scholars, retired or precariously employed, etc. –  to reflect on what ethnography and anthropological theory mean to them. Why engage in this practice? What should the next 50 years of ethnographic analysis – be it via writing / film / blogging / policy creation / etc. – look like? In what ways has the journal served these aims? What other modalities of practice can, and should, anthropologists engage in?

We invite position pieces of 2,000 to 5,000 words. Selected essays will undergo external review and revision prior to publication as part of this special forum.  Please submit your contributions via ScholarOne (which you can access here: https://americanethnologist.org/journal/submit/ ) noting in your abstract that it is intended for the special “50^th anniversary forum.” The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2023. If you have questions, please contact the Editor-in-Chief, Susanna Trnka, at: americanethnologisteditors@gmail.com