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Paper short abstract

After reviewing earlier debates concerning the anthropological field in (post)socialist Eastern Europe, the paper moves beyond insider/outsider tensions to consider uneven disciplinary landscapes generally. Ethical cosmopolitanism has to be realistically reconciled with cumulative science.

Paper long abstract

The paper addresses the need to overcome hierarchies and create a level playing field for the production and dissemination of anthropological knowledge generally (perhaps even universally). In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), decolonization debates must take account of the complex history of this region as well as evolved differences between comparative social anthropology and the “ethnological” traditions found in most continental European countries. Diagnoses of “hierarchies of knowledge” (Buchowski 2004) followed the end of the Cold War. If not polarization, there was definitely some friction between indigenous scholars and researchers from metropoles such as Cambridge alleged to be “orientalising” CEE and neglecting indigenous voices. Insider/outsider tensions are significant in many parts of the world but, after revisiting this particular discussion concerning CEE, this paper moves beyond the issues surrounding “anthropology at home” to explore enduring structural inequalities in the era of accelerating globalization. It engages pragmatically with the “project of expansion” recommended by Andrew Sanchez (2023). His proposals for equalizing intellectual communities are evaluated with reference to one community of scholars in CEE (in Budapest) and found to be unrealistic, perhaps utopian. The metropoles are not fading away. Is imperative to work out new forms of cooperation on an egalitarian basis. However (bearing in mind the panel’s invitation to consider “moral horizons”), multipolar cosmopolitanism in the anthropological field can be ethically problematic and difficult to reconcile with the criteria for a science that should be academically cumulative as well as politically progressive.