In my experiments with zines (in classes, research collaborations, and conferencing), I’ve also begun writing about them as a form and where I see them fitting into the discipline of anthropology. Part of the fun of zines is their free-wheeling style and devil-may-care attitude which stands in strong contrast to the often staid, ass-clenched writing of most academic scholarly outputs. In this article (which was once also a zine itself!), I make the case for why zines are useful forms for anthropologists to engage with and I show how they can be very useful alternatives (or even complements) to peer-reviewed publications. The essay is now available in open access format in American Anthropologist.
Nicholas C. Kawa 