The hour of anthropology may have struck. by R. Salutin The strength of anthropology is its analysis of our own society as just another tribe trying to make sense of its experience. I keep encountering anthropologists (mostly but not only in print) who help more in understanding how the world works today than other experts do, even in their own fields. For example, Debt: The First 5,000 Years by young U.S. anthropologist David Graeber, who did fieldwork in Madagascar, illuminates more about the current economic crisis than anything I know by economists. It even points to ways out. U.K. anthropologist Sir Jack Goody, who’s 93 and studied tribal cultures in West Africa, has expanded the idea of democracy far beyond a thing invented in Athens, and then perfected in the U.S. and U.K. In the volatile area of fundamentalist religion, U.S. anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann’s When God Talks Back clarifies that arena more than most of what we see from theologians to new atheists. Has the hour of anthropology struck? If so, why now? thestar/opinion/commentary/2013/07/26/the_hour_of_anthropology_may_have_struck_salutin.html
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 13:52:19 +0000
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