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Accepted Paper:
Anthropology in the Interest of Hope and Radical Optimism: Ideas, Commitments, Actions, and Examples
Alisse Waterston
(City University of New York, John Jay College)
I will discuss: hope as making sense of the world regardless of how it turns out; optimism that all will turn out well; and radical optimism relating to the future of anthropology and its potential to produce and disseminate knowledge that inspires collaborative action on behalf of a livable future.
Paper Abstract:
Given the state of the world, many are at a loss about what can be done to change its destructive course. Given that anthropology, at points in its history, has been implicated in facilitating the same destructive course that scholars look to study and understand, it is no wonder that some suggest abolishing the discipline as we have known it (Jobson 2020). Having felt despair while committing my life as an anthropologist to a radically optimistic future for the discipline, I recognize that to sustain hope and radical optimism requires imagining an alternative world and an alternative discipline, and to be specific about what we want, and what it takes to achieve. In this paper, I discuss the ideas of: hope as it relates to making sense of the world regardless of how it turns out (Havel 1986); optimism as the conviction that all will turn out well; and radical optimism as it relates to the future of anthropology and its potential to produce and disseminate knowledge that inspires collaborative action on behalf of a livable future. Invoking examples from my work and of other engaged scholars, I also discuss specific actions and activities anthropologists have taken, do take, and may continue to take in the effort to replace radical evil with radical good. They are doing the work, day-in-and-day-out, most often without recognition in the mainstream media or popular culture, and sometimes suppressed by extremely powerful opposing forces. Still, they persist, as do I and as can we.