Paper short abstract:

Concurrent disasters have led to a world in crisis. The upheavals have brought questions for anthropology: the study of sequestration not groups; the dichotomy of probability and possibility; how we research now; deduction induction; the rise of applied; cultural change; and displacement.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2020 the world has been engulfed a profound global disaster: the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected people of every ilk in every nation. At the same time, people everywhere are dealing with climate change slowly creeping across the globe. It has brought rising waters, heat, desertification, crop loss, insects and often massive storms. Simultaneously, a number of other disasters have ensued landing the world with a true conundrum of ills. The resulting enigma for the study of anthropology and of disasters is equally complex. Anthropology has always dealt with groups, but now must investigate human sequestration. Yet concurrently, it must chronicle communities together adapting to habitat changes. All told, the situation leads to a reexamination of a number of tenets in anthropology and particularly in the field of disaster studies: the all hazard approach to risk; the dichotomy between possibility and probability; the study of isolation in contrast to groups; the unfolding new play within the four levels of environment and human communities; the problem of burgeoning displacement and the socio-cultural issues within behind it; the resurgence of the old question of socio-cultural change with the new drivers propelling it; the rise of the applied focus yet the furthering separation between knowledge, policy and practice; the question of how anthropology research can now be conducted and a revisitation of the scientific matter of induction versus deduction.