Anthropology in the Meantime
Experimental Ethnography, Theory, and Method for the Twenty-First Century
Michael M. J. Fischer (Author)
9781478000402
Hardback, published 10 September 2018
464 pages, 16 illustrations
22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.748 kg
"Anthropology in the Meantime is a rich collection of essays in tune with the central debates in contemporary cultural anthropology. . . . It serves as a survey of the present state of the field, identifying the tensions and re-inscribing them in the long tradition of anthropological scholarship. . . . Recommended. Advanced undergraduates and above."
- A. Ponce de Leon (Choice) " [This book] maintains a productive line that brings one back to the spirit, above all, of ethnographic exploration as idea and method mining. ... I believe it arrives at a perfect moment. [Fischer] contributes to various contemporary discussions within anthropology on religion, film, politics, postcolonialism, and gender/sexuality."
- Joseph Russo (Anthropological Quarterly) “This wonderful and well-researched collection of essays on third ethnographic spaces offers a pragmatic vision for anthropology in the Kantian spirit of the formation of a world society. A must read indeed in times of rapid change.”
- Michelangelo Paganopoulos (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)
In Anthropology in the Meantime Michael M. J. Fischer draws on his real world, multi-causal, multi-scale, and multi-locale research to rebuild theory for the twenty-first century. Providing a history and inventory of experimental methods and frameworks in anthropology from the 1920s to the present, Fischer presents anthropology in the meantime as a methodological injunction to do ethnography that examines how the pieces of the world interact, fit together or clash, generate complex unforeseen consequences, reinforce cultural references, and cause social ruptures. Anthropology in the meantime requires patience, constant experimentation, collaboration, the sounding-out of affects and nonverbal communication, and the conducting of ethnographically situated research over longitudinal time. Perhaps above all, anthropology in the meantime is no longer anthropology of and about peoples; it is written with and for the people who are its subjects. Anthropology in the Meantime presents the possibility for creating new narratives and alternative futures.
Prologue: Changing Modes of Ethnographic Authority 1
Part I. Ethnography in the Meantime
1. Experimental Ethnography in Ink, Light, Sound, and Performance 39
2. Ontology and Metaphysics Are False Leads 49
3. Pure Logic and Typologizing Are False Leads 79
Part II. Ground-Truthing
4. Violence and Deep Play 99
5. Amazonian Ethnography and the Politics of Renewal 114
6. Ethnic Violence, Galactic Polities, and the Great Transformation 130
Part III. Tone and Tuning
7. Health Care in India 161
8. Hospitality 186
9. Anthropology and Philosophy 198
Part IV. Temporalities and Recursivities
10. Changing Media of Ethnographic Writing 233
11. Recalling Writing Culture 258
12. Anthropological Modes of Concern 276
Epilogue: Third Spaces and Ethnography in the Anthropocene 298
Acknowledgments 345
Notes 349
Bibliography 391
Index 429
