Asian Ethnology 81 1&2 | article Editors’ Note

Benjamin Dorman, Frank J. Korom

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We are pleased to present this volume of Asian Ethnology. In addition to our normal policy of publishing individual articles, research notes, and reviews, we have included a new category, “documentary note,” which is a contribution by Jon Kay focusing on ethnographic filmmaking.

This volume is essentially two issues combined into one. Similarly, in 2014 we published a single volume (Asian Ethnology 73–1&2), which featured two special issues on Indian tribal culture. In addition to publishing one combined issue this year, we have also decided to pause the submission process of the journal for a six-month period, starting on September 16, 2022, until March 16, 2023. We ask anyone interested in submitting work to the journal to understand that we will not be undertaking peer review for any new submissions during that period. However, if you have something in the pipeline you wish to submit, please do so after March 16, 2023, when we will again begin to accept submissions for consideration.

We continue to work on a number of individual articles we have received, and special issues of the journal, including one that is scheduled to be published in the first issue of 2023, “Demons and Gods on Display: The Anthropology of Display and Worldmaking.”

This year also sees further staffing changes with the journal. Calynn Dowler, our editorial assistant at Boston University, will be stepping down to begin a new, tenure-track position at Vanderbilt University on religion and environmental anthropology. She has done an incredible job, so we wish her well in her future endeavors. Fathimath Anan Ahmed, a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at Boston University, will replace Calynn. Anu, as she is more fondly known, explores how Maldivians experience madness and/or mental illness and how they construct themselves, along with their kin, as ethical “modern” subjects in the rapidly shifting sociopolitical context of the Greater Male’ Region. Her research lies at the intersection of South Asian and Muslim studies, anthropology of morality, and psychological, medical, and linguistic anthropology as she examines how global discourses of health and religion, and the modernization efforts of a recently democratized nation state, become implicated in the formation of complex subjectivities.

We have updated the website to include an “Announcements” section, in which we will post news related to the journal and also material related to publications and events connected to the Nanzan University Anthropological Institute. Last year we wrote in our Editors’ Note (AE 80–1) about our hopes for a brighter, post-pandemic future. Clearly Covid-19 still affects us all in some ways. We are determined to continue to produce the highest quality journal possible, despite the conditions of the pandemic.