Society for Cultural Anthropology

What Society for Cultural Anthropology does

The Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA) is a nonprofit professional membership organization founded in 1983 and operating as the largest section of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). It serves faculty, researchers, and graduate students in cultural anthropology, with a stated commitment to interdisciplinary, experimental, and anti-colonial/anti-racist scholarship. Its core product portfolio consists of three scholarly communication channels: Cultural Anthropology, a peer-reviewed journal published via Open Journal Systems at journal.culanth.org (currently at Vol. 41, No. 2); Fieldsights, a short-form web publication on culanth.org featuring essays, teaching tools, and curated series such as Hot Spots, Theorizing the Contemporary, and Multimodal Studio; and AnthroPod, an audio podcast distributed via SoundCloud and major podcast platforms. The society also operates two named prizes: the Gregory Bateson Book Prize for interdisciplinary ethnographic scholarship and the graduate-student–juried Cultural Horizons Prize for outstanding journal articles.

The society is headquartered in the United States under the AAA umbrella and serves a global academic audience. It has 1–10 employees, no disclosed revenue figures, and no app, API, or proprietary technology stack beyond standard academic publishing infrastructure (OJS, web CMS, podcast hosting). Content is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Distribution is entirely digital and self-serve, with membership acquisition flowing through the AAA membership portal at americananthro.org and community engagement occurring through AAA annual meeting panels and roundtables (e.g., 2025 New Orleans). The society's go-to-market is community-led, leveraging the AAA's membership pipeline and its own content platforms to attract and retain cultural anthropology scholars.

Name

Society for Cultural Anthropology

Legal name

Society for Cultural Anthropology

Website

https://culanth.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

1983

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

The Society for Cultural Anthropology is the largest section of the American Anthropological Association, serving academic cultural anthropologists and graduate students worldwide through the peer-reviewed journal Cultural Anthropology, the Fieldsights web publication, and the AnthroPod podcast, with revenue from membership dues via AAA.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Scholarly Publishing

NAICS

Business Associations (813910), Professional Organizations (813920)

SIC

Services-Membership Organizations (8600)

akta.pro primary industry

Scholarly Society & Association Publishing (EDAGAFAK)

akta.pro secondary industry

Humanities & Arts Scholarly Publishing (EDAGAFAE)

Keywords

• Scholarly publishing
• Academic journals
• Cultural anthropology
• Professional society
• Scholarly podcasts

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Membership dues: The SCA generates revenue through annual membership fees collected via the American Anthropological Association (AAA) membership portal. Membership provides access to the journal Cultural Anthropology, Fieldsights content, AnthroPod podcast, prizes, events, and networking within the section.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

The Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA) is a nonprofit professional membership organization and section of the American Anthropological Association that supports scholarly research and communication in cultural anthropology. It publishes the peer-reviewed journal Cultural Anthropology, the online publication Fieldsights, and the podcast AnthroPod, while also administering the Gregory Bateson Book Prize and Cultural Horizons Prize.

Product overview

The Society for Cultural Anthropology operates a unified portfolio of scholarly communication products: the peer-reviewed Cultural Anthropology journal (published at journal.culanth.org via Open Journal Systems), the short-form web publication Fieldsights, and the AnthroPod podcast. These products are complemented by two named prizes—the Cultural Horizons Prize and the Gregory Bateson Book Prize—that recognize outstanding contributions in the field. The SCA is the largest section of the American Anthropological Association and serves as a professional society for cultural anthropologists.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Cultural Anthropology The premier peer-reviewed academic journal in cultural anthropology, publishing original ethnographic research articles for academic readers.
• Fieldsights An online sister publication to Cultural Anthropology that features shorter essays, commentaries, and field notes from cultural anthropologists.
• AnthroPod A podcast produced by the Society for Cultural Anthropology featuring interviews, discussions, and conversations with cultural anthropologists and scholars in related fields.

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• EDGES (Entangling Indigenous Knowledges in Universities) projectcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 22 June 2026The EDGES project, a Horizon MSCA Staff Exchanges network, provided funding support for the AnthroPod miniseries on Linguistic Anthropology and Linguistic Anthropologists in Mexico. This partnership enabled cross-institutional collaboration in support of decolonized anthropological knowledge production.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Others

• Modern Language Association: Major humanities scholarly association with a peer-reviewed journal (PMLA), annual convention, and membership dues model—an adjacent reference point for how large scholarly societies operate journals, prizes, and member services.
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies: Adjacent humanities scholarly society with a peer-reviewed journal (Cinema Journal), annual conference, and member-driven governance—comparable in operating model as a discipline-specific learned society even though its field differs.

Regional players

• European Association of Social Anthropologists: Regional scholarly society for social/cultural anthropologists in Europe, publishing journals (e.g., Social Anthropology) and hosting the biennial EASA conference—comparable mission and membership model across a different geography.
• Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth: UK-and-Commonwealth scholarly association for social anthropologists with a journal and conference programming—comparable as a peer scholarly society primarily serving a different geographic membership base.

Direct peers

• Society for Psychological Anthropology: Sibling AAA section publishing the journal Ethos and convening anthropologists at AAA meetings—directly comparable as a sub-disciplinary scholarly society with peer-reviewed journal and prize programs.
• Society for Linguistic Anthropology: Another AAA section that publishes a peer-reviewed journal (Journal of Linguistic Anthropology), awards prizes, and serves a sub-discipline of anthropology with overlapping membership and infrastructure through AAA.
• American Ethnological Society: Oldest anthropological professional society in the U.S., publishing American Ethnologist and serving cultural anthropologists with comparable membership, journal, and conference programming models.
• Association for Political and Legal Anthropology: AAA section publishing the journal PoLAR and running member programs—directly comparable in structure, scale, and reliance on AAA membership infrastructure.
• Society for the Anthropology of Religion: AAA section with similar membership, journal (Religion and Society), and prize structure serving a sub-discipline within anthropology; comparable in mission, audience, and governance model.

Broad incumbents

• American Anthropological Association: Parent organization and largest anthropological association in the U.S. SCA operates as the largest section of the AAA; AAA serves as the umbrella body coordinating sections, the annual meeting, and the membership portal through which SCA collects dues.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/culanth
• Facebookfacebook.com/CulturalAnthropology
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/society-for-cultural-anthropology

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Subsidiaries1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Society for Cultural Anthropology