Just Be Active! Letter from Your Editor

Brian Moeran
2013 Journal of Business Anthropology  
Well, here we are again. The fourth issue of the JBA heralds the end of this journal's second year in existence -not bad, really, given the fact that most journals, like most new products, tend to disappear from the supermarket shelf of academic ideas after a few issues. It's always good to buck a trend. Still, the question remains lurking in the background, as I move forward with the fifth issue due out next spring: how long will the JBA continue? Or rather, how long should it, how long does
more » ... need to, continue? By this I mean that any new academic journal, when launched, should set itself a specific task (to explore a new field of research, for example, or to bring together scholars from across disciplinary boundaries) and keep that task in mind throughout its early years. Once it has achieved that task, it should either set itself a new task, or gracefully retire from the unholy realm of journal rankings, impact factors, and hindices. So, what tasks did we have in mind for the JBA when Christina Garsten and I launched it in the spring of 2012? Well, first and foremost, the idea was to provide a forum for those involved in one way or another in business anthropology to write about methodological, theoretical, and practical challenges that they faced in their research and/or working environments. In this way, secondly, we hoped that this forum might be read by and influence people actually engaged in business of all kinds, and that, as a result, the discipline of anthropology might be regarded not just
doi:10.22439/jba.v2i2.4154 fatcat:kntmnqwaazgqvcoqv7s5zqcdzu