Paper short abstract:

In the current paper we explore scenarios in which anthropology may move beyond its shackling to the institutions that continue to brutalise us, towards new possibilities to practice meaningfully, ethically and accessibly— both within and beyond the university.

Paper long abstract:

In 2020 Ryan Cecil Jobson made a stir with his article, ‘The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn’. Jobson chastises social anthropologists who ‘have grown comfortable with a language of crisis’ and eschew ‘decisive action in the face of matters of life and death’. Climate change is just one of numerous crises that have impacted the discipline in recent years. Anthropology, along with other HASS disciplines prone to critical analysis of hegemonic governance structures, continue to endure the relentless attacks of the neoliberal governments they critique. Anthropology departments around the world have been buffeted by internal discord in relation to their own normative power dynamics, including allegations and findings of exploitation, bullying as well as racial and gendered violence. The direct and radiated impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on anthropology departments constitutes a crisis that most of us are still experiencing. If Jobson was sincerely advocating for letting anthropology burn, then he may note with satisfaction that many departments are now fully ablaze. In the current paper we take this crisis as our point of departure and explore some of the scenarios in anthropology moves beyond its current state of perpetual crisis while defending the coherence and value of the discipline—from an institutional strategy of integrative complexity and interdisciplinary team-building and pedagogy to a wholesale retreat from the university, to organisations such as the AAS, EASA and AAA, new genres of disciplinary production, and other more emergent forms of anthropological practice in the “undercommons”.