Rumpelstiltskin's Deliverables: Grimm Inspiration for Humanism in Development

Abstract

Is there space for humanistic anthropology within the development sciences used to plan economic growth and ecological modernization? This article adapts a provocative fable to ponder a "global assemblage" designed to transfer authoritative knowledge and advanced technology for "sustainability" from the American Midwest to postsocialist eastern Europe. I retell the story of Rumpelstiltskin to reflect on participation in global systems of outsourced expertise, guessing at the nature of "the helper" with the aid of the fanciful. [Keywords: reflexivity, blurred genres, applied anthropology, sustainable development, eastern Europe] I I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold. The Miller in "Rumpelstiltskin"

Disturbing Disruptions and Aspirational Participation as an Academic Anthropologist: Reflections on COVID‐19, Neoliberalism, and Climate Change

“…And so we might travel further still down previously unimagined paths of rededication to profession and university, sometimes at cross‐purposes to our initial intent, making the familiar strange. Anthropologist Tracy Heatherington (2010) highlights these dynamics in the context of the systems within which universities and university professors operate, particularly emphasizing the parallels this has with her research on and participation in neoliberal development. She builds her case for tenure in the face of shrinking support for humanities research by engaging in the increasingly normalized research opportunity presented by “interdisciplinary partnerships, [which] unite academics with private capital” (2010, 68).…”