The End of Anthropology, Again: On the Future of an In/Discipline

The "End of Anthropology" has been predicted many times and for many different reasons—among them, its disappearing object of study, its political imbrication in colonialism, the loss of its distinctive concepts, and the effects of globalization in diffusing its received subject matter. An...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican anthropologist Vol. 112; no. 4; pp. 524 - 538
Main Author Comaroff, John
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Malden, USA Wiley Periodicals, Inc 01.12.2010
Blackwell Publishing Inc
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects
Academic discipline
African Christianity
Anthropology
Anthropology of religion
Colonialism
Cultural anthropology
Cultural studies
disciplinarity
Discourse
Discourse analysis
Empiricism
Ethnography
Feminist anthropology
Globalization
IN FOCUS: (NOT) THE END OF ANTHROPOLOGY, AGAIN? SOME THOUGHTS ON DISCIPLINARY FUTURES
Knowledge
Linguistic anthropology
Political anthropology
Politics
spatial and temporal scales
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0002-7294
1548-1433
DOI10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01273.x

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Summary:The "End of Anthropology" has been predicted many times and for many different reasons—among them, its disappearing object of study, its political imbrication in colonialism, the loss of its distinctive concepts, and the effects of globalization in diffusing its received subject matter. And yet, both institutionally and discursively, the discipline is very much alive, producing new species of knowledge, new theoretical discourses, new empirical interests, new arguments. How, in light of this, do we read the history of its present? By what means is its "end" to be avoided, its future(s) assured? Where should it go from here, empirically, methodologically, theoretically? One answer lies in a new indiscipline, a discourse that, in dialectic tension with the contemporary world in which it is embedded, redefines the scale, the conceptual foundations, and the techniques of knowledge production of anthropology.
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ISSN:0002-7294
1548-1433
DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01273.x