Book review: "After Ethnos" ii
COVID and the increased frequency with which the 'collective' has entered our discourse resonates for me, as this disrupts, crystallizes the INDIVIDUAL-GROUP axis of Hodges' model. It is clearer now.
There is an important take-away in: "Ethnology emerged as the "science" of the people without history.." p.9.
There is an elephant in this book. You hear it in the distance, far away - as in anthropologically, ethnographically in fieldwork. When premoderns and moderns are discussed, colonial attitudes and beliefs of peoples far-away.
Good to see Latour p.12 and leaving the
index unwrapped there was a surprise to follow. Which came first I
wondered, medical sociology or medical anthropology? There are -
inner-disciplinary developments. In the late 1980s - early 90s several
anthropologists conducted fieldwork in "domains that were formerly
believed to be beyond the scope of anthropological expertise, or
interest ... medicine, science, and technology." p.11.
I related readily to Rees's scene-setting and history on the arrival of 'culture' (1770s) and how the human is conceptualized. Yes, in the age of anthropogenic climate change, would you really want to be a cultural anthropologist? p.14.
Time, really is messed up. The developed majority have opted-in to
record history in carbon, not just as it has always been. The future is
being written now.
Anyone familiar with Hodges' model will understand my enthusiasm in reading of 'spaces of being', 'disciplinary significance', and the 'house of knowledge' (yes!). The key to the book overall, Rees calls for a philosophically inclined (another line?) anthropology (after ethnos). p.14.
"To be a philosophically inclined anthropologist is to orient oneself in thinking by way of thinking* - in order to find out if, and if, then in what concrete ways venues of thinking/being are coming into existence." p.16 (with ref.)*meta-cognition?
Rees devotes chapter 3 on fieldwork, the major expeditions that helped shape anthropology and ethnography. In terms of orientation there is a stage even before the journey to the hinterlands. I have interpreted Hodges' model as a conceptual periplus, a map of the coastline of an unknown land, the foundation and (literal) framework of the house of knowledge, be that, a situation, person, family, a discipline, or culture.
Reading, you appreciate the need for anthropology to revise its intellectual toolkit.
Yes, as an 'open situation' anthropology is situated, but then so is all humanity (and h2cm)?
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person, self, individuated |
SCIENCES, TECHNOLOGY, MEDICINE time - distance - place | |
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people, family, other(s), myths, rituals, magic, history(?), society | a philosophically inclined anthropology APPLY HERE! |
More to follow ...
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965