Anthropology at the Frontiers

Titelangaben

Marty, Samira ; Shafafi, Pardis:
Anthropology at the Frontiers.
In: Anthropology in Action. Bd. 31 (2024) Heft 3 . - S. 1-6.
ISSN 1752-2285
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2024.310301

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Abstract

As the new editors of Anthropology in Action, we join a growing community of sociocultural anthropologists who seek not only theoretical analysis but also practical engagement with some of the world's most pressing challenges, such as socioeconomic inequality, ethics and technological advancements, intensifying political instability and violence, resurgent authoritarianism, accelerating climate breakdown, and the enduring, often violent, legacies of colonialism are not isolated crises. Anthropology in Action emerged as a journal of applied anthropology to address these pressing questions and challenges. Yet, applied anthropology, both in past relation to this journal and in a broader understanding, has been typically understood through the lens of making anthropologists employable in non-university settings. This is either considered laudable, especially in the current moment of academic defunding and under-enrolment in anthropology courses, or it is viewed as a weakness for not persisting within the very academic structures that have caused this predicament. This binary thinking divides the field into academic anthropology and applied practice as if they were separate domains. The founding debates in applied anthropology have overwhelmingly focused on the need to place anthropologists into professional positions, given the limited academic career paths universities can offer (see Pink and Fardon 2004).