Respect, care, and labor in collaborative scholarly projects | Somatosphere

"As members of Somatosphere’s Editorial Collaborative, we have been following the unfolding crisis surrounding Hau with profound concern (Agro 2018, Flaherty 2018). As others have noted, this crisis has revealed multiple structural issues that deserve intense engagement beyond the specifics of the individual case: open-access (OA), digital scholarship and publication, yes, but also academic power, precarity, and vulnerability; disciplinarity and the decolonization of anthropology; and technology and institutional structure. In this reflection, we reaffirm our commitment to making Somatosphere a collaborative forum that values mutual respect, equity, intellectual generosity, difference, and care. This is a crucial moment for being collectively self-critical about how well we realize this commitment: What kind of community is actually sustained through our platform? What voices are prominent within it? What processes do we have for holding one another to account? How can we can make what we do even more responsive to the multiple structural issues revealed in this crisis?"