A brilliant tract on the critical issues concerning anthropology today. Dominated by the West in every way and with all its ghosts and demons, can anthropology be of any use to humankind.
The discipline of anthropology originated in European and American intellectual traditions that focused principally on non-Europeans - the anthropologized - as exotic and primitive others. Anthropology's birth as the handmaiden of empire and colonialism, its involvement in eugenics, human specimen collecting, and other outrageous endeavours has been intensely scrutinized.
One of the questions this essay poses is whether anthropolgy can fully exorcize its inherited demons. Are there limits to the effectiveness of its critical power? What remains to be done? Can anthropology do it?
