Reinventing and Reinvesting in the Local for our Common Good

Document Type

Book

Publication Date

2020

Abstract

Excerpt: Anthropologists have long been committed to social science done in public and in the public interest. This commitment has been demonstrated by, among other things, support for a globally contextualized understanding of local-level processes of change—a history considered in this volume in the chapter by Melinda Wagner and in Brian Hoey’s personal reflection on the ethnographic method. Despite this long-standing commitment, anthropology has only infrequently reached public consciousness and discussion, even while ideas and practices native to the discipline have been put to use fruitfully by other scholars as well as various practitioners working in the public domain. These non-anthropologists have, at times, been more willing and able to expand the impact of core concepts and methods native to anthropology than have anthropologists themselves. Speaking to fellow anthropologists as the field emerged from at least twenty years of roiling (and often divisive) introspection that seemed to leave many within the discipline averse to practical engagement, James Peacock noted that “If the discipline is to gain recognition and a valuable identity, it must accomplish things; it must be active beyond its analytical strategy.

Comments

These proceedings are open access, and they include selected papers from the Annual Meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society, Huntington, West Virginia in April, 2016. © 2020 by Southern Anthropological Society: southernanthro.org. Newfound Press is a digital imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries. Its publications are available for noncommercial and educational uses, such as research, teaching, and private study. The author has licensed the work under the Creative Commons Attribution–Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS