Contribution short abstract:

Theorisation derived from long-term engagement with local communities is key to anthropological work on Central Asia. It allows for findings to be extrapolated and juxtaposed across spatial and temporal scales in order to produce an understanding of human societies that transcends local contexts.

Contribution long abstract:

Does theorisation in anthropology, as put by a colleague in the conclusion to The Central Asian World, result in work that is “unreadable and inaccessible to those who haven’t mastered academese?” Do scholars who produce theoretical work do so to “only impress their peers or those that they highly regard in the profession?” There is no doubt that much of what is produced by anthropologists is often overtheorised, as we all strive to publish in leading journals that meet the demands of neoliberal academe. Much of this theorisation indeed can be overly (and unnecessarily) complex—as someone who looks back on his assemblage-theory-inspired PhD dissertation with some regret, I can personally attest to that. But that does not change the fact that theorisation derived from long-term engagement with local communities is key to anthropological work. It allows for findings to be extrapolated and juxtaposed across spatial and temporal scales in order to produce an understanding of human societies that transcends local contexts. Calls for a less unreadable and inaccessible anthropology are most welcome as criticism, but they seem to treat an entire discipline as method, synonimising it with its signature tools of ethnography and participant observation and mistaking it for a mere endeavour to record local practices. Somewhat more dangerously, at a time when academic jobs in the social sciences and the humanities are more precarious than ever, such calls fall into the trap of relegating academic discourse in these disciplines to “academese,” inadvertently legitimising their defunding.