Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hage, Ghassan

Titel

The anthropological and the consequential

Ist Teil von

• American anthropologist, 2023-03, Vol.125 (1), p.168-170

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Wiley Online Library Journals Frontfile Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Though this text raises several important issues, there is one aspect that I want to particularly interact with. It has to do with a mode of valorizing anthropological inquiry in relation to a certain socio-political function it is invited to perform. While stressing that they do not want to imply that “research should respond only to current events,” Gupta and Stoolman nonetheless argue that “the chase for novelty, which is so often elevated to primary importance, does not always lead to theories that are consequential for the world. We believe that there is much work to be done, theoretical as well as applied, by keeping a sharp focus on what is politically and socially most important.” I want to reflect on this conception of what makes anthropology “consequential for the world.”