The official and the unofficial

This is interesting. David Price wrote a short review about anthropology blogs--it's pretty fascinating when two different styles of communication start referring to one another. Here is a little excerpt from Rex at Savage Minds about this:

Today I woke up to the usual quarterly flow of new journal alerts into my inbox and was surprised — delighted, really — to see a very complimentary article in the latest American Anthropologist on Savage Minds, Zero Anthropology, and the AAA blog. In another proof of its incredible capacity to do the work of our association, AnthroSource has the article behind a paywall while Wiley-Blackwell has it available for everyone to read (here is the abstract and you can download the PDF here sorry here is the actual link).

The (short) article is well worth reading. It gets me thinking about how--and why--anthropologists create information. In many ways, I find journal articles to be both extremely useful and extremely closed. I wonder how publishing models will change, or if they will change in the near future. The problem, ultimately, is about the control of information. There HAS to be some measure of control, right? Maybe.

Overall, I prefer the informal nature of blogs to a lot of what I have to read all the time. It's interesting to see people bend the rules a little, mix up the standard presentations, and even just post some things off the cuff. Here are some of the sites that I check all the time:

Zero Anthropology
Neuroanthropology
Middle Savagery
Sociological Images
Savage Minds
anthropologyworks
Archaeological Haecceities