The Uncertain Present and the Multimodal Future

• Published in: American anthropologist Vol. 123; no. 1; pp. 191 - 193
• Main Authors: Collins, Samuel, Durington, Matthew, Gill, Harjant
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.03.2021
• Subjects: Anthropology; Democracy; Disruption; Everyday life; Forest & brush fires; Hurricanes; Multimodality; Pandemics; Racial justice; Self interest; Social justice; White supremacy; United States > US
• ISSN: 0002-7294; 1548-1433
• DOI: 10.1111/aman.13535

Defying our collective expectations, 2020 has turned out to be a year of radical disruptions. A global pandemic brought the world to a standstill, a growing movement for racial justice forced us to confront the violence of white supremacy that pervades everyday life in the United States, apocalyptic wildfires and an unending barrage of hurricanes forecast environmental catastrophes, and a fumbling US administration, driven by green and self-interest, held democracy hostage. Some of these disruptions have caused immense suffering and harm, while some have been productive. They all force us to reimaging our work and our contributions to the society in different ways, different from what we had been doing so far. Four years ago, when then editor-in-chief Deborah Thomas launched the Multimodal Anthropologies section and appointed us as its editors, we had conceived this notion of multimodality as one such disruption to the status quo in anthropology, with the desire to imagine different ways of doing what we do. We had no idea that such disruptions would become the norm three years later, in 2020.