Paper short abstract:

Anthropologists are now engaged in huge issues that are of cross-disciplinary interest, and which are policy-relevant: perhaps most notably climate change, contagious diseases, and family, sex and gender. There are new research methods, revolutionary modes of communicating ideas. Is an interdisciplinary intellectual community taking shape?

Paper long abstract:

The current situation of social anthropology is paradoxical. At the time that EASA was founded, thirty years ago, we were engaged in large and resonant debates about theory – about structuralism, and sociobiology, and postmodernism; about gender and identity; and about post-colonial development policy. But we felt that not enough attention was paid to us by other social scientists, by policy makers, and by the general public. Our current situation is very different. Out there in the world there is a real if rather puzzled interest in the great issues of anthropology. These are discussed in blockbuster best-sellers. Unfortunately they are not written by anthropologists. And yet today a number of anthropologists are engaged in huge issues that are of cross-disciplinary interest, and which are policy-relevant: contagious diseases, and now Covid19; Climate Change; Migration; Family, Sex and Gender; Identity and Nationalism. And the coming generation of researchers has adopted new research methods, and new modes of communicating their ideas and their results in online journals and forums, and video sites. Is a new intellectual community taking form?