Paper short abstract:

Anthropology is ineffective in translating its perspective onto language of public debate. There are many, interconnected factors of the situation, among which the most important are: blurred boundaries of the discipline, blurred subject-object relations (engagement or activism) and vague distinctiveness of the discipline.

Paper long abstract:

The question whether anthropology might be an important element of the public debate (as i.e. opinion-maker) seemingly rely on its applicability, because the presupposition that support this view is misleading. It is worth to notice that if the discipline isn't easily applicable, or it doesn't provide prescriptions for solving practical problems, is not automatically perceived as worthless and excluded from the debate. Philosophy, archeology or history are the best examples. The thing is that those disciplines are more effective then anthropology in translating their perspective onto language of public debate. Why? The answer is multifaceted. First of all they have already well-established symbolic capital as consistent and thus reliable disciplines - anthropology blurs its boundaries to the extent that even for its practitioners makes the discipline vague. Vagueness isn't a perfect basis for being reliable. Secondly, why should we expect being treated as experts (objective scholars) if in most cases when anthropologists speak about some socially relevant problem he takes a side - thus mixes roles (at worst becomes an activist and thus, additionally, loosing a distance necessary for understanding). The third factor is a distinctiveness - we sometimes act as we were economists, political scientists, sociologists, etc. which we are not, and thus not only confusing our "audience", but also compete in the competition in which we are in a worse position in advance.