Paper short abstract:

Our ways of doing anthropology are increasingly out of step with the need to attend to planetary entanglements. Drawing on three stories of encountering and acting on climate change in the UK, we re-conceive anthropology as a worldly discipline grounded in commitments to mediation and displacement.

Paper long abstract:

As anthropology expands to account for an ever-growing range of other-than-human entanglements the practice of anthropology itself has come to appear increasingly limited. Anthropological practice remains widely understood as a process of research and representation, grounded in the demarcated spaces of the field and academy, respectively.

Stepping back, and unpacking what anthropology has to offer within a world that so often denies its constitutive entanglements, we argue that research and representation can be understood as particular ways of enacting broader, underlying disciplinary commitments to mediation and displacement. Reconceiving anthropology firmly in these terms enables us to approach anthropology as a far more worldly practice, extending beyond the limits of field sites and the academy.

To unpack what it means to pursue anthropology as a practice of mediation and displacement, we explore three examples from our own entanglements surrounding climate change in the UK. In London we tell the story of a ‘just transition’ campaign, where our involvement helped activists to mediate between ‘expert’ knowledge and grassroots struggles, allowing new alliances to emerge. In Manchester we retrace an ‘energy walk’, that connected policymakers, activists and residents to neglected histories where energy was held as a common good. And, across both cities, we discuss our work as part of a multi-disciplinary collective, using sensors and data visualizations to attempt to catalyse collective action. Across each of these cases, we illustrate anthropology as a practice of mediating between different worlds, mutually displacing established ways of being to allow new futures to emerge.