American Anthropologist - Four-field Approach

Four-field Approach

The four fields of Anthropology include cultural, linguistic, archeology and biological/physical. Sometimes applied anthropology is added as a fifth division.

Among the journals published by the AAA, The American Anthropologist is the only one that follows the "four field" approach, publishing articles from all the subdisciplines of anthropology. Proponents of four-field anthropology see American Anthropologist's broad scope as important to maintaining disciplinary unity, while critics have expressed serious reservations about this aim, and criticize pressures since the 1970s against editors and works that do not subscribe to four field holism as an ideal for anthropological scholarship.