#john comaroff

Citation

Comaroff, John.

     2010.  The End of Anthropology, Again: On the Future of an In/Discipline.  In American Anthropologist.  American Anthropological Association 112(4): 524-38.

Abstract

 “Is the field of anthropology truly near its death?”  The answer to this question would be “Not quite,” according to John Comaroff in The End of Anthropology, Again: On the Future of an In/Discipline.  Anthropology’s impending death has been anticipated for a while on numerous occasions, and yet for a variety of reasons as well.  However, it is rather argued that a new indiscipline has erupted, involving a redefinition of its concepts and knowledge production on a larger scale.  

The potential crisis comes with three symptomatologies, mainly pointing towards the failing nature of the ethnography.  Although the methodology of the ethnography was once traced back to the anthropologist, this is no longer the case, as other disciplines have covered similar topics and explained these topics even more thoroughly and more insightfully than ever—in comparison to the “thin” anthropological ethnographic accounts (Comaroff 2010: 526).  The concept of explaining even a broad topic, such as culture itself, is no longer needed analytically due to the rise of educational programs, exposure through branding by nations and other media, and controversies in trademarking, as insisted by “natives” (Comaroff 2010: 526).  Therefore, what exactly does anthropology focus on anymore?  There is not one subject matter that anthropology can call their own.

In reaction to the dilemma, anthropologists have tried to focus back onto the (exotic) local.  As part of the goals of anthropology, attempts to reinstate the ability to “get inside and understand small-scale communities, to comprehend [their] systems of knowledge” creates a sense of security (Comaroff 2010: 528).  Fieldwork continues to thrive since ethnography can continue to function without any rules to dictate against it.  Within these ethnographies also include the authors’ description of experiences, images, and events in narratives while simultaneously hoping to not impose any authorial order and allowing them to “speak for themselves.” Using description as a way of presentation of the local subject does not equate to anthropological methods, however.  This lack of anthropological outlook relates to the third reaction, which suggests that the return to the concept of culture is back in the author’s own phenomenology (experience, belief, and being-in-the-world) (Comaroff 2010: 529).  

These problematic reactions of retreating into the local, resorting to the empirical, and returning to the cultural actually call for a move toward the notion of indiscipline—a more favorable rise due to the need for reshifting of concepts and methodology in anthropology.  The “demise” of the discipline ultimately came with a re-identification. Anthropologists no longer have a specific subject matter or rules within their methods/concepts.  Comaroff states, “We are what we study and how we study it” (Comaroff 2010: 529).  It is no longer stressed to focus back on “the exotic local” just because anthropology has done this for years to keep the discipline alive.  By opening up different fields to anthropologists, it allows for true critical thinking and interest, thus promoting analytical discourse among these individuals.  Comaroff also mentions the operation of being-and-becoming, which “refers to establishing how it is that verbs of doing become nouns of being…thus to illuminate the pathways by which lived worlds are pragmatically produced, socially construed, and naturalized” (Comaroff 2010: 530).  Therefore, instead of presenting the local as mentioned before, the method is more subtle in that it situates the person, place, or thing, but brings about their meaning and their chances of becoming. By widening the field of interests instead of focusing on a sole theme and establishing its naturality, the anthropologist no longer has a defining role to add any contraindications or paradoxes.  The methodology can finally present itself without the help of the anthropologist, as its unexpectedness would, in reality, be both familiar and strange.