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Some of this prestige relates to the push from within the academy to secure more grants and contracts. Financial awards from biomedical research and public health funders are generally heftier than humanities awards. In addition, the former have more cachet outside of anthropology. This can be important to scholars seeking career advancement: There does exist a political economy of research (see Singer 1992b; Sobo 2009).

But Marcus’s argument is not directly concerned with that. Rather, he worries that most “career making research projects” today rely on “social and cultural theory produced elsewhere than in anthropology” (p. 676). He also argues that, with no prevailing “disciplinary metadiscourse” or unique central tendencies – even the old claim of culture as anthropology’s special purview has been challenged, for instance, by “cultural studies” – prestige in anthropology may influence but cannot come from the core: “Anthropologists in general tend to be most impressed with their own research initiatives that most impress others” (p. 681) – by work that garners recognition in extramural “authoritative knowledge creating spheres” (p. 687).