Short Abstract

This panel explores how the discipline of anthropology can sustain rigorous, accountable work from within an increasingly precarious, short-term and uncertain disciplinary landscape.

Long Abstract

As the world grows increasingly fragmented and polarized, the urgency for anthropology to address divisions becomes ever more pressing. Anthropology plays a vital role in emphasizing interconnectedness, equity, and collaboration, and in imagining a more inclusive world. Yet core anthropological practices, such as sustained engagement and deep understanding of social worlds, are challenged by an academic employment and funding landscape that is itself precarious and unequal.

This panel reflects on the consequences and possibilities for the anthropological project and ethos in a context defined by short-term employment, limited specialization opportunities, precarious working conditions, and reliance on diverse, and often industry-driven, funding.

How should we e.g. navigate growing dependence on funding bodies while remaining accountable to the communities with whom we work? What happens when open-ended research questions are reshaped to fit funders’ expectations? Meanwhile, cutbacks in the social sciences and humanities have rendered junior researchers increasingly replaceable, producing short cycles of shifting field-engagements and temporary contracts, or exits from academia altogether. We must ask: how does short-term employment affect our ability to conduct rigorous research, attend to the complexities of people’s lives, and represent social worlds with depth - especially under accelerating pressure to publish? Furthermore: What becomes of research when projects end prematurely? What happens to us as researchers, and to the people we work with, when we are abruptly forced to withdraw?

We invite participants to reflect on the tensions between anthropology’s disciplinary ambition to engage deeply with a fractured world and the increasingly fragmented disciplinary landscape in which we work. We ask contributors to explore possibilities for collective action across countries, institutions, and tenure statuses: What can we do for one another, for the issues we study, and for the discipline itself, so that anthropology may fulfill its ambitious potential?

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
Propose paper