The Ends of Anthropology: 2014 in U.S. Sociocultural Anthropology

Abstract

In this essay, I trace the operations of a moral optimism and a skepticism that lie, uneasily, at the foundation of sociocultural anthropology. As other authors of year-in-review pieces have noted, anthropology is motivated by a moral optimism pointing toward the possibilities of an ethically and politically better life. Equally as fundamental, I argue, is a rigorous skepticism interrogating the shifting conditions that give life to anthropology's possibility. Here, I follow the productive tension between these two stances through the sociocultural anthropology of 2014, loosely grouping that work under the rubrics of "ends," "immediacy," "ecology," and "refusal." Throughout, I make a push for increased attention to our ethic of skepticism as means of tempering the discipline's moral optimism. [optimism, skepticism, immediacy, connection, year in review, sociocultural anthropology] RESUMENEn este ensayo, delineo las operaciones de un optimismo moral y un escepticismo que yacen, incómodamente, en la fundación de la antropología sociocultural. Como otros autores de los artyículos del año en revisión lo han notado, la antropología está motivada por un optimismo moral señalando hacia las posibilidades de una vidaética y políticamente mejor. Igualmente fundamental, argumento, es un escepticismo riguroso interrogando las condiciones cambiantes que dan vida a la posibilidad de la antropología. Aquí, sigo la tensión productiva entre estas dos posiciones a través de la antropología cultural del 2014, agrupando en líneas generales ese trabajo bajo las rúbricas de "fines", "inmediatez", "ecología", y "rechazo". A lo largo, presiono por una atención creciente a nuestraética de escepticismo, como un medio de temperar el optimismo moral de la disciplina. [optimismo, escepticismo, inmediatez, conexión, año en revisión, antropología sociocultural] ON SKEPTICISM AND OPTIMISMIn this essay, I review work in U.S. sociocultural anthropology from 2014. At the same time, I argue for attention to a skepticism that lies at the heart of our discipline, frequently overshadowed by the equally longstanding moral optimism that fuels our discipline's forward tilt. Michel de Montaigne begins his 16th-century essay "On the Cannibals" by questioning the chauvinistic tendency for anyone to call "barbarous anything he is not accustomed to" (1991:231). He argues, in counterpoint, for seeing the barbarism of the "we": "Those 'savages' are only wild in the sense that we call fruits wild when they are produced by Nature in her ordinary course: whereas it is fruit we

Sociocultural Anthropology in 2016: In Dark Times: Hauntologies and Other Ghosts of Production

“…The anthropological “ends” (Hankins ) gave way to the birth of “emergent cultures and material life,” seen in last year's review (Koenig ). Reviewing the trends in 2016, I shift the engagement to think hauntingly about these two central tensions, cultural and materiality, as they index ontology as a logic of practice.…”

“…I respond to this call by showing the ebb and flow of these light and dark readings, and troubling the nature of hope and skepticism. Hankins () framed this tension as foundational to our enterprise. These kinds of dialectical oppositions can—as Hankins shows—serve to help us think through the very process of synthesis in ethnographic production: “Sympathetic proximity to an other—whether that other be precarious or vulnerable, emergently or ontologically different, or savagely noble—still fuels vision for ‘our’ self‐transformation” (554).…”

‘Edgy’ politics and European anthropology in 2016

“…As Joseph Hankins noted in his review of the year 2014 in American Ethnologist , moral optimism generated from alter‐political thinking, and debates around the conditions that make alter‐political thinking possible have shaped recent anglophone anthropology (Hankins ). Discussion surrounding Euro‐anthropology and its scholarship in 2016 can be framed in a similar way.…”

“…Questions of materiality, ontology and futures coupled with detailed empirical attention help us to approach the edges of global political and economic thinking. D i s c i p l i n a r y e d g e s As Joseph Hankins noted in his review of the year 2014 in American Ethnologist, moral optimism generated from alter-political thinking, and debates around the conditions that make alter-political thinking possible have shaped recent anglophone anthropology (Hankins 2015). Discussion surrounding Euro-anthropology and its scholarship in 2016 can be framed in a similar way.…”

The Year 2015 in Sociocultural Anthropology: Material Life and Emergent Cultures

“…My review, instead, focuses on work that seems to offer new directions for understanding societies and cultures. Many articles published in late 2014 and 2015 treated the themes brought up in previous reviews, including precarity and insecurity, dispossession and impoverishment, race, citizenship, politics, ecology and the environment, religion and ethics, circulation and modernity, and the growth of new forms of capitalism (Carse ; Hankins ; Muehlebach ). These remain important topics for anthropological analysis, and continued work on them enriches the discipline.…”