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Accepted Contribution:
Anthropology inside-out?
David Mills
(University of Oxford)
What happens if we turn anthropology inside-out? What would it take to research in an anthropological way that managed without the label and its disciplinary institutions? And what might one learn from doing so?
Contribution long abstract:
An emotional affiliation to ‘anthropology’ as an academic identity does many things. It offers an ontological foothold, a feeling of intellectual belonging, and a (mostly) shared set of ethical commitments. But could we manage without this epistemological label and the accompanying disciplinary infrastructure? And if so, what does that tell us about disciplinarity in the social sciences? In this paper, I reflect on my own attempts at turning the history, politics and sociology of social anthropology inside out.
The story of social anthropology is one of modernist experimentation, intellectual worlding and bureaucratic institutionalisation. The three are difficult to disentangle. Disciplinary formations are always contingent , always emergent, and could always be otherwise. If we are to rely on academic identity politics, we have to acknowledge – and trouble - the performative and contrarian aspects of this affiliation work.