Paper short abstract:

Is promoting social change compatible with anthropology as a positive science? This paper argues that not only are these two goals commensurate but the radical potential of anthropology lies precisely in its ability to produce universal theories and to bridge the social and natural sciences.

Paper long abstract:

In previous debates it has been suggested that anthropology can either aim for objectivity or pursue moral motives as a form of social activism. In contrast, this paper argues that the tradition of critical social science to which some anthropologists belong should be understood as a logical extension of enlightenment principles and pedagogical ideals. Moreover, anthropology’s potential as a politically transformative enterprise lies in its capacity to use the comparative method and engagement with cognate disciplines to imagine radically different alternatives to our present societies. Yet in the 1980s, various forms of critique were mounted that have fundamentally changed the discipline. The consequences of this include a widespread distrust of dialogue with the natural sciences, structuralism, and any theory-building beyond the ‘middle-range theory’ pertinent to localized sub-disciplines. While this has arguably led to the fragmentation and increased specialization of academic anthropology, it has also robbed it of much of its potential to address contemporary problems or to help realize social change.

Paper short abstract:

How much cultural diversity ought to be allowable within liberal democracies? How good are anthropologists at answering questions about tolerance, for example, when faced with customs such as a gender-equal, religiously based Muslim version of the ancient Jewish Abrahamic circumcision tradition?

Paper long abstract:

For much of the twentieth century American cultural anthropology was meant to be an antidote to ethnocentrism and a challenge to imperial "up-from-barbarism," "we're developed/you're not", “West is best” thinking. That was its value. That was its telos. Its aim was to promote social intelligence in a world of plural beliefs, ideologies, values and ways of life. It’s mission (a classically liberal one) was to expand the scope of toleration for cultural and civilizational differences. Its message to practitioners: Nature, human rationality and the rules of moral reason leave plenty of room for cultural variety, so strive to verify the reality, validity, and intelligibility of values, beliefs and ways of life different from your own. My presentation will address two questions: (1) How is that pluralistic ideal connected to three other contemporary conceptions of the value of anthropology, for example, as a positive science seeking to discover how the world works; as a skeptical discipline unmasking claims to objective knowledge, and as a moral movement engaged in social activism?; and (2) To what extent is our discipline able to address normative questions about the scope and limits of tolerance for cultural diversity in liberal democracies such as our own? Highlighted as a case in point will be the recent prosecutions of Muslim mothers of the Dawoodi Bohra community in the United States, Australia and India, who are under attack because they customarily adhere to a religiously based gender-inclusive/gender-equal version of the ancient Jewish Abrahamic circumcision tradition.

Paper short abstract:

I argue both that prioritising the goods by which anthropology is defined is inherently productive of particular ethical values, and that these values have progressive political implications of their own.

Paper long abstract:

From the first, the applications of anthropology - its imagined social purposes - have been diverse and often contradictory. Efforts to utilise the discipline have included military support (González, 2018), improving the efficiency of businesses enterprises, and aiding colonial administration (e.g. Malinowski, 1929; Schapera, 1947), as well as - for example - aiding native interests against exploitation, or in 'making the world safe for human differences'. In Macintyrean terms, all such ends are 'external' goods - achievable without the use of anthropology, and in no sense intrinsic to its practice.

Here, with reference to historical cases of 'applied anthropology' and the current efforts of anthropologists to ameliorate the conditions in Xinjiang, China, I argue both that prioritising the goods by which anthropology is defined - the (continued) production of reliable ethnographic data and theory - is inherently productive of particular ethical values, and that these values have progressive political implications of their own.