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In this culmination of his search for anthropological concepts and practices appropriate to the twenty-first century, the author contends that to make sense of the contemporary, anthropologists must invent new forms of inquiry. He begins with an extended rumination on what he gained from two of his formative mentors: Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz. Reflecting on their lives as teachers and thinkers, as well as human beings, the author poses questions about their critical limitations, unfulfilled hopes, and the lessons he learned from and with them. This spirit of collaboration animates this book, as the author assesses the last ten years of his career, largely spent engaging in a series of intensive experiments in collaborative research and often focused on cutting-edge work in synthetic biology. He candidly details the successes and failures of shifting his teaching practice away from individual projects, placing greater emphasis on participation over observation in research, and designing and using websites as a venue for collaboration. Analyzing these endeavors alongside his efforts to apply an anthropological lens to the natural sciences, the author lays the foundation for an ethically grounded anthropology ready and able to face the challenges of our contemporary world.

This book examines the complex connections among conceptions of human nature, attitudes toward non-human nature, and ethics. The book proposes an “ethical anthropology” that examines how ideas of nature and humanity are bound together in ways that shape the very foundations of cultures. It discusses mainstream Western understandings of what it means to be human, as well as alternatives to these perspectives, and suggests that the construction of a compelling, coherent environmental ethics will revise our ideas not only about nature but also about what it means to be human. The book begins to integrate theological narratives with scientific ones, looking for a compelling correlation between them where modern and religious sensibilities might both be affirmed.

Challenges to ethnographic authority and to the ethics of representation have led many contemporary anthropologists to abandon fieldwork in favor of strategies of theoretical puppeteering, textual analysis, and surrogate ethnography. This book argues that ethnographies based on these strategies elide important insights. To demonstrate the power and knowledge attained through the fieldwork experience, this book includes chapters by anthropologists working in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tanzania, the Canadian Arctic, India, Germany, and Russia that shift attention back to the subtle dynamics of the ethnographic encounter. From an Inuit village to the foothills of Kilimanjaro, each account illustrates how, despite its challenges, fieldwork yields important insights outside the reach of textual analysis.

The intersection between history and anthropology is more varied now than it has ever been—a look at the shelves of bookstores and libraries proves this. Historians have increasingly looked to the methodologies of anthropologists to explain inequalities of power, problems of voicelessness, and conceptions of social change from an inside perspective. And ethnologists have increasingly relied on longitudinal visions of their subjects, inquiries framed by the lens of history rather than purely structuralist, culturalist, or functionalist visions of behavior. The contributors to this book deal with the problems and possibilities of the blurring of these boundaries in different and exciting ways. They provide further fodder for a cross-disciplinary experiment that is already well under way, describing peoples and their cultures in a world where boundaries are evermore fluid, but where we all are alarmingly attached to the cataloguing and marking of national, ethnic, racial, and religious differences.

This book asks about the logical standards and forms that should guide ethical and experimental anthropology in the twenty-first century. The authors do so by taking up Max Weber’s notion of the “demands of the day.” Just as the demand of the day for anthropology decades ago consisted of thinking about fieldwork, today, they argue, the demand is to examine what happens after, how the experiences of fieldwork are gathered, curated, narrated, and ultimately made available for an anthropological practice that moves beyond mere ethnographic description. The authors draw on experiences from an innovative set of anthropological experiments that investigated how and whether the human and biological sciences could be brought into a mutually enriching relationship. Conceptualizing the anthropological and philosophic ramifications of these inquiries, they offer a bold challenge to contemporary anthropology to undertake a more rigorous examination of its own practices, blind spots, and capacities, in order to meet the demands of our day.

The book presents a highly original reflection on the status of an “anthropology of the contemporary”. Following on the same authors’ Demands of the Day, this new and convincing manuscript gives a coherent elaboration of the central arguments, movements and shifts from research rooted in the experience of the present to a contemporary one understood as an ethos. The book contains two highly original case studies which illustrate the relevance and richness of this approach. In Part 1, the authors undertake an erudite discussion of philosophical grounds and concepts necessary for an anthropology of the contemporary by way of an ongoing engagement with arguments established by Max Weber, John Dewey and Michel Foucault (e.g. his notion of ‘foyers d’expérience’), as well as with other authors (e.g. Kant, Blumenberg, Warburg, Geertz). Central to this engagement is the guiding idea of anthropological inquiry as ‘practice of form-giving’ linked to an ongoing attention to questions of ethics. The book considers inquiry--and its aftermath—where a near future is at stake, one, however, which is not (or only in part) determined by the past and the present. Part II consists of two case studies: one on the Rushdie Affair, the second one on ‘Gerhard Richter’s Pathos’. Based on different kinds of texts (interviews, letters, printed articles, anthropological research, etc.), they demonstrate the basic ideas of an exploration of the contemporary and its key challenge (for anthropology and contemporaries): how to conceptualize and give form to breakdowns of truth and conduct.

Does anthropology have more to offer than just its texts? This book discusses different forms of engaged research practices, which it defines in terms of their constructive intervention into politics. It draws on the author’s experiences working with indigenous peoples fighting for their environment, land rights, and political sovereignty. Describing both short interventions and collaborations spanning decades, it recounts interactions with lawyers and courts, nongovernmental organizations, scientific experts, and transnational corporations. In particular, it calls for greater reflexivity in encouraging engaged anthropologists to pay greater attention to politics beyond the text. The book considers how political commitments affect research, when contributions to political change are elusive, and how the search for alternatives may influence the results. It also asks whether the research continues to matter if the intervention fails, shows how the analysis of local contexts can have global significance, examines how intervention into political conflicts can precipitate backlash, and discusses the political dilemmas of an expert witness. By focusing on the contribution of engaged anthropology toward solving problems in the world, the book articulates a new rationale for why anthropology matters.

This book explores some of the different ways in which Europe's Islamic past inhabits its present, unsettling contemporary efforts to secure the continent’s Christian civilizational identity. Taking southern Spain as its primary focus, it examines forms of history and memory that mediate and sustain an active relation to the Islamic heritage of Andalusia, and the impact these forms have on the ethical and political possibilities of finding a place for Islam in Spain and Europe today. This effort at historical recuperation has been the central concern of a longstanding tradition (known as Andalucismo) among Spanish artists, writers, musicians, and political thinkers, a tradition based on the principle that contemporary Andalusia is linked in vitally important ways with al-Andalus (medieval Islamic Iberia) and that the challenges faced by Andalusians today—and by Europeans more broadly—require a recognition of that historical identity and continuity. The book gives particular attention to the role of musical and aesthetic sensibilities in shaping the way the past is encountered and given a place in the lives of contemporary Andalusians. Challenging conventional interpretations of Andalucismo as Romantic fictionalization or Orientalist fantasy, The Feeling of History highlights the multiple ways Spaniards have accommodated their lives to the demands of an inheritance only partially available to knowledge and thus more felt than known, and in doing so, have sought to unsettle the historical geography of what today is called fortress Europe.

This book contains chapters written by anthropologists who have experienced the unpredictability and trauma of political violence firsthand. The chapters combine theoretical, ethnographic, and methodological points of view to illuminate the processes and solutions that characterize life in dangerous places. They describe the first, often harrowing, experience of violence, the personal and professional problems that arise as troubles escalate, and the often-surprising creative strategies people use to survive. In the book the chapters give voice to all those affected by the conditions of violence: perpetrators as well as victims, civilians and specialists, black marketeers and heroes, jackals and researchers. Focusing on everyday experiences, the chapters bring to light the puzzling contradictions of lives disturbed by violence: the simultaneous existence of laughter and suffering, of fear and hope. By doing so, they challenge the narrow conceptualization that associates violence with death and war, arguing that instead it must be considered a dimension of living.

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? This book challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human—and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon, the book draws on ethnographic research to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world’s most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. This book seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, it skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. The work takes anthropology in a new direction—one that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

In How Lifeworlds Work, Michael Jackson seeks to reinvigorate the study of kinship and ritual by theorizing a society as a force field in which affective as well as cognitive elements are in tension, and constant adjustments are effected between subjective imperatives and shared needs. Drawing on forty years of ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa and elsewhere, Jackson draws on cybernetics, affect theory, and pragmatism to explore the subtle strategies and micropolitics of face-to-face relationships in both ritual and mundane settings, and the ways that individual passions subvert or serve the common weal.

The authors draw on their 40 years as anthropologists and educators to illustrate through a narrative-style text and photographs what it is like to be an anthropologist and to “do” anthropology—the problems encountered as well as the pleasures and rewards of living in other cultures and learning from other people. Through accounts of their lives and work in varied cultural settings, the authors describe the many forms fieldwork can take, the kinds of questions anthropologists ask, and the common problems they encounter. From these accounts and the experiences of their students, In the Field makes a powerful case for the value of the anthropological approach to knowledge.

This book is a compelling study that charts the influence of indigenous thinkers on Franz Boas, the founder of modern anthropology. In 1911, the publication of Franz Boas's The Mind of Primitive Man challenged widely held claims about race and intelligence that justified violence and inequality. Now, this book examines how this groundbreaking work hinged on relationships with a global circle of indigenous thinkers who used Boasian anthropology as a medium for their ideas. Chapters examine how Boasian thought intersected with the work of major modernist figures, demonstrating how ideas of diversity and identity sprang from colonization and empire. The focus is on the assemblage of individuals and communities who influenced the production and dissemination of modern concepts of diversity, identity, and belonging. This network of communities, cutting across binaries of race and boundaries of empire, is called the Boasian Circle. The book spotlights indigenous intellectuals, African American and pan-African scholars, German and Jewish scientists, and Latino writers and thinkers, all of whom contributed to the making of global cultural studies.

The human sciences—including psychology, anthropology, and social theory—are widely held to have been born during the eighteenth century. This study of the Enlightenment sciences of humans explores the sources, context, and effects of this major intellectual development, arguing that the most fundamental inspiration for the Enlightenment was the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Natural philosophers from Copernicus to Newton had created a magisterial science of nature based on the realization that the physical world operated according to orderly, discoverable laws. Eighteenth-century thinkers sought to cap this achievement with a science of human nature. Belief in the existence of laws governing human will and emotion; social change; and politics, economics, and medicine suffused the writings of such disparate figures as Hume, Kant, and Adam Smith, and formed the basis of the new sciences. A work of cross-disciplinary scholarship, this book illuminates the origins of the human sciences and offers a new view of the Enlightenment that highlights the period's subtle social theory, awareness of ambiguity, and sympathy for historical and cultural difference.

Living in the Stone Age scrutinizes a stubborn colonial fantasy: one that has trapped the people of the troubled Indonesian territory of West Papua in the past. The book focuses on the experiences of a handful of Dutch officials tasked with establishing a post in the Wissel Lakes region of the highlands when the territory was still part of the Netherlands Indies. Two of these officials played a key role in the campaign to retain western New Guinea as a separate Dutch colony after the Indies gained independence; they saw the Stone Age Papuans as too primitive to rule themselves. The book explores how these officials relied on the hospitality and expertise of local people and how they used sympathy as a means of colonial state building. It examines the dreams of mastery and vulnerability that their dependence on technology inspired. In doing so, it advances a surprising argument: to account for the historical production of this fantasy, and the historical work it has done, we have to tell the story of colonialism as a tale that begins with weakness, not strength. The book ends with a reflection on the ethical and epistemological implications of cultural anthropologists’ own deployment of sympathy as a method. Living in the Stone Age uses a minor episode in colonial history to ask some big questions: on the origins of colonial ideology, the impassioned nature of colonial practices, and what it takes for cultural anthropologists to make claims about such things.

For centuries, humans have excelled at mimicking nature in order to exploit it. Now, with the existential threat of global climate change on the horizon, the ever-provocative Michael Taussig asks what function a newly invigorated mimetic faculty might exert along with such change. Mastery of Non-Mastery in the Age of Meltdown is not solely a reflection on our condition but also a theoretical effort to reckon with the impulses that have fed our relentless ambition for dominance over nature. Taussig seeks to move us away from the manipulation of nature and reorient us to different metaphors and sources of inspiration to develop a new ethical stance toward the world. His ultimate goal is to undo his readers’ sense of control and engender what he calls “mastery of non-mastery.” This unique book developed out of Taussig’s work with peasant agriculture and his artistic practice, which brings performance art together with aspects of ritual. Through immersive meditations on Walter Benjamin, D. H. Lawrence, Emerson, Bataille, and Proust, Taussig grapples with the possibility of collapse and with the responsibility we bear for it.

Methods that Matter is an invitation to explore the benefits of mixed methods. This collection of original essays by leading social scientists illustrates ways of doing work that crosses methodological silos and can inform policy on real world problems. Mixed methods research, if used by individual or collaborating researchers, enables the collection of generalizable and contextualized data simultaneously. Is it worth the effort it takes to go past the methodological comfort zones of particular disciplines? The authors in this book answer with a resounding “Yes!” In their engagingly written chapters, they demonstrate that mixed methods is more than worth the effort—it can lead to more interesting findings than either qualitative or quantitative methodologies alone. This collection ultimately creates a platform for scholarly conversations across disciplines that expand scientific and encourage future interdisciplinary collaborations to answer the real world questions of tomorrow.

As the image of anthropologists exploring exotic locales and filling in blanks on the map has faded, the idea that cultural anthropology has much to say about the contemporary world has likewise diminished. In an increasingly smaller world, how can anthropology help us to tackle the concerns of a global society? This book argues that the traditional tool of the cultural anthropologist—ethnography—can still function as an intellectually exciting way to understand our interconnected, yet mysterious worlds. It describes the changing nature of ethnography as anthropologists use it to analyze places closer to home. The book maintains that a conversational style of ethnography can help us look beyond our assumptions and gain new insight into arenas of contemporary life such as corporations, financial institutions, science, the military, and religion. It is a friendly challenge to anthropologists to shed light on the present and join broader streams of intellectual life. And for those outside the discipline, its vision of ethnography opens up the prospect of understanding our own world in much greater depth.

Across the humanities and the social sciences, disciplinary boundaries have come into question as scholars have acknowledged their common preoccupations with cultural phenomena ranging from rituals and ceremonies to texts and discourse. Literary critics, for example, have turned to history for a deepening of their notion of cultural products; some of them now read historical documents in the same way that they previously read “great” texts. Anthropologists have turned to the history of their own discipline in order to better understand the ways in which disciplinary authority was constructed. As historians have begun to participate in this ferment, they have moved away from their earlier focus on social-theoretical models of historical development toward concepts taken from cultural anthropology and literary criticism. Much of the most exciting work in history recently has been affiliated with this wide-ranging effort to write history that is essentially a history of culture. The chapters presented here provide an introduction to this movement within the discipline of history. The chapters in Part One trace the influence of important models for the new cultural history, models ranging from the pathbreaking work of the French cultural critic Michel Foucault and the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz to the imaginative efforts of such contemporary historians as Natalie Davis and E. P. Thompson, as well as the more controversial theories of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra. The chapters in Part Two are exemplary of the most challenging and fruitful new work of historians in this genre.

This book addresses the interplay between modes of writing, modes of understanding, and modes of being in the world. Drawing on literary, anthropological and autobiographical sources, the book explores writing as a technics akin to ritual, oral storytelling, magic and meditation that enables us to reach beyond the limits of everyday life and forge virtual relationships and imagined communities. Although Maurice Blanchot wrote of the impossibility of writing, the passion and paradox of literature lies in its attempt to achieve the impossible—a leap of faith that calls to mind the mystic's dark night of the soul, unrequited love, nostalgic or utopian longing, and the ethnographer's attempt to know the world from the standpoint of others, to put himself or herself in their place. Every writer, whether of ethnography, poetry, or fiction, imagines that his or her own experiences echo the experiences of others, and that despite the need for isolation and silence his or her work consummates a relationship with them.