“But the original mandate of anthropology and ethnography remains clear: to put ourselves and our discipline squarely on the side of humanity, world-saving, and world-repair, even though we may not always be certain about exactly what this means or what is being asked of us at any particular moment. In the final analysis we can only hope that our time-honored methods of empathic and engaged witnessing, of ‘being with’ and ‘being there’ – as tired as these old concepts may seem – will provide us with the tools necessary for anthropology to emerge as a small practice of human liberation” (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, Violence in War and Peace, p. 27).
I don't know if Tylor or Malinowski would have put it in quite the same way, but believing that I'm fighting the world's fight makes it ever-so-slightly easier to crank out this essay on the anthropology of violence.
1 comment:
That quote rocks my socks.
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