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In a time of intense uncertainty, social strife, and ecological upheaval, what does it take to envision the world as it yet may be? The field of anthropology, Anand Pandian argues, has resources essential for this critical and imaginative task. Anthropology is no stranger to injustice and exploitation. Still, its methods can reveal unseen dimensions of the world at hand and radical experience as the seed of a humanity yet to come. A Possible Anthropology is an ethnography of anthropologists at work: canonical figures like Bronislaw Malinowski and Claude Levi-Strauss, ethnographic storytellers like Zora Neale Hurston and Ursula K. Le Guin, contemporary scholars like Jane Guyer and Michael Jackson, and artists and indigenous activists inspired by the field. In their company, Pandian explores the moral and political horizons of anthropological inquiry, the creative and transformative potential of an experimental practice.
In a time of intense uncertainty, social strife, and ecological upheaval, what does it take to envision the world as it yet may be? The field of anthropology, Anand Pandian argues, has resources essential for this critical and imaginative task. Anthropology is no stranger to injustice and exploitation. Still, its methods can reveal unseen dimensions of the world at hand and radical experience as the seed of a humanity yet to come. A Possible Anthropology is an ethnography of anthropologists at work: canonical figures like Bronislaw Malinowski and Claude Levi-Strauss, ethnographic storytellers like Zora Neale Hurston and Ursula K. Le Guin, contemporary scholars like Jane Guyer and Michael Jackson, and artists and indigenous activists inspired by the field. In their company, Pandian explores the moral and political horizons of anthropological inquiry, the creative and transformative potential of an experimental practice.
Introduction. An Ethnographer among the Anthropologists 1
1. The World at Hand: Between Scientific and Literary Inquiry
15
2. A Method of Experience: Reading, Writing, Teaching,
Fieldwork 44
3. For the Humanity Yet to Come: Politics, Art, Fiction,
Ethnography 77
Coda. The Anthropologist as Critic 110
Acknowledgments 123
Notes 127
Bibliography 141
Index 155
Anand Pandian teaches anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include Reel World: An Anthropology of Creation and the coedited volume Crumpled Paper Boat: Experiments in Ethnographic Writing, both also published by Duke University Press.
“Incorporating the current movements beyond 'writing culture' of
twentieth-century anthropology, Anand Pandian reinstantiates the
poetics of an ethnographic method that anticipates futures. In the
midst of a surge of multimodal experimentation, Pandian stunningly
reinvests in the narrative character of ethnography.”
*Ethnography by Design: Scenographic Experiments in Fieldwork*
“Offering the daring gambit of revisiting anthropology's past to
make it new, and critically meditating, too, upon the field's
latest theoretical moves, Anand Pandian's captivating book is a
stirring brief for ethnography as a method for exploring that which
is and may yet be possible.”
*Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology
and Beyond*
"This is a book that practicing anthropologists and students of
anthropology must both read."
*Anthropology Book Forum*
"A Possible Anthropology is bold, caring, and creative in trying to
confront these issues head on, in trying to imagine some other kind
of world."
*Cultural Anthropology*
"With a focus on figures in the discipline’s past and current
practices, A Possible Anthropology contributes to debates about the
future of anthropological inquiry (and the ethnographic method) in
academia and the wider world. It is an evocative and inspired book,
clearly written and rigorous."
*Anthropological Quarterly*
"This book is an inspirational joy and a read I recommend."
*Qualitative Research*
“Pandian has offered a strong work. . . . A Possible Anthropology
is indeed a hopeful book for uneasy times, that encourages us to
dive deeper into an anthropological way of engaging with the
world.”
*Anthropos*
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