A history of anthropological ideas and nimble people

Focusing on the personal life of the author is always not a good look, but on the other hand, the author's column involves personal impressions. In this case, personal impressions begin with a statement of grievances - this is even more unpleasant. But there is a second side to this: perhaps many of our troubles largely stem from the fact that we have been taught to be offended?

I want to tell readers about one trouble that anyone who deals with publishing houses may encounter. Actually, it’s a sin for me to complain about publishing houses. I have been and continue to collaborate with a number of publishing houses for a long time and fruitfully, and have published more than one book from them. These are the publishing houses of Leningrad/St. Petersburg and Donetsk universities, Oxford and Ljubljana universities, Eurasia and Belvedere, the long-vanished Farn and Folio-Press. However, with one of my books there was an embarrassment. I apologize, but to understand its essence, you will have to delve into the details.

We are talking about the “History of anthropological teachings.” I worked on this book for a long time. In the 90s, he developed and taught such a course to students at Leningrad University, and then to graduate students at the European University in St. Petersburg and the University of Washington in Seattle. In the early 2000s, he underwent surgery for cancer and, being taken away from lectures and overcoming his illness, turned his course into a book. He worked on it for several additional years, and by 2004 he submitted it to the St. Petersburg publishing house “Eurasia”.

Unfortunately, while working on my book, the publishing house suffered financial troubles, and it was forced to curtail its activities (as it turned out later, only temporarily). The publisher wanted to publish my book, but could only do it with the help of a grant, was about to submit an application, and the prospects were doubtful. Through friends I learned about the Moscow publishing house “Academic Project” and offered him my book in January 2006. The publishing house (director - Alexey Ivanovich Moiseev, editor-in-chief - Antonina Aleksandrovna Anshukova) stated that he was very happy with the book, that it would publish it in the best possible way , But . It is advisable to receive a grant from the Ministry of Press for publication (Federal Program for Support of Book Publishing in Russia).

I collected reviews. The publishing house "Eurasia", in order not to interfere, refrained from its application. Only the “Academic Project” submitted an application. In 2006, the publishing house received a grant for this book of mine (No. 23, under the heading “Alma Mater”, for 45 academic sheets, 3000 copies - data published). It turned out that the meager fee offered to me for several years of work was less than the monthly salary of a store clerk. This did not correspond either to the fact that the publishing house received a grant in my name, or to my ideas about basic decency. In addition, the publishing house wanted to include in the contract (for the same payment) perpetual rights to publish my book in foreign languages.

When I expressed my disagreement with this, the publishing house said that my book was generally not good enough for them and they refused to publish it.

Since the Eurasia publishing house was still experiencing difficulties, I offered my book to St. Petersburg University. The university publishing house agreed to a decent fee, and an agreement was concluded in 2007. But since before that the university publishing house was working on another book of mine, work on “The History of Anthropological Doctrines” was postponed until the release of that book (it is expected in January). Now “The History of Anthropological Doctrines” has been edited and is being prepared for publication there.

In 2008, I sent a detailed summary of this book with its table of contents to the Internet portal Archaeology.ru , and in 2009 this portal published them as an announcement. Individual chapters from this book were published in the Moscow magazine “Personality Development” (2004, 2; 2005, 2; 2008, 4; 2009, 2; two more in print).

But in the meantime, the Moscow publishing house “Academic Project”, it turns out, implemented the received grant in its own way (or received a new edition of it). It ordered a book with my title from another, its author, Elna Aleksandrovna Orlova, the author of the “Introduction to Anthropology” of the 90s, republished in 2004 in the Academic Project. In 2008, E. A. Orlova presented the publishing house with a book of 50 sheets, and in 2010 the “Academic Project” published it under the title “History of Anthropological Teachings”, with a circulation of 3000 copies.

What complaints can I have? It hardly makes sense to accuse the publishing house or E. A. Orlova of plagiarism. There can be many books on the history of anthropology, many of them published under the same title. But the name can be formulated in different ways. History of anthropology, history of theoretical anthropology, history of anthropological ideas, history of anthropological theories…. But the formulation of the title “History of Anthropological Teachings” has never been used by anyone. This was my formulation, and it was snatched from my hands and used in the title of a completely different book before mine was published. Efficient, but ugly.

Even when using the titles of already published books, authors usually remain polite. When E.E. Kuzmina, a very famous researcher, wanted to give her book the title of one of my articles (“Where the Aryans came to India”), she asked me if I had any objections. I, of course, replied that I had no objections. When I myself decided to give my two-volume work the title under which the monograph of Bruce Trigger, a Canadian scientist (now deceased) and my friend, exists, I asked for his written permission and received it.

By the way, my title, in my opinion, does not fully correspond to the content of E. A. Orlova’s book. E. A. Orlova simply took her “Introduction” and expanded it, giving each chapter a historical perspective, and even deepened that only to the last third of the 19th century.

The book also does not fully meet the functions of a “textbook for pedagogical universities” noted on the title page. The language of the book is very heavy (as Lenin used to say, “Gelerterish”), the text is boring, full of philosophical abstractions, without characterization of individuals, the publication is devoid of illustrations. To a large extent, the essence is an adaptation of American textbooks, even the literature in the chapters is purely English with small inclusions of German and French, as is usually the case in American textbooks. Russian literature is added separately at the end of the book. One can only sympathize with the students who will be forced to “chew” this text.

This is, of course, just my impression. Perhaps I am too partial to the book: this is a book by my competitor, and it is associated with an episode that is unpleasant for me. Researchers will probably find interesting ideas in it, but this is not a textbook, for the life of me.

My book may have its shortcomings, maybe big ones. But I guarantee that it will be interesting to read.

And I would like to wish the publishing house “Academic Project” to be more academic in its treatment of authors. You should be nimble in publishing books, and not in snatching from authors what is bad. Believe me, it will backfire. And don't skimp on your fees. Be truly your alma mater—a nursing mother. You need to feed not only your families and your employees, but also us, the authors. After all, we do science.