Do No Harm

Abstract

The issue of harm in certain contexts and settings at some very fraught moments appears overly connected to anthropology: an idea of the discipline is made as the problem in a focus that can overshadow the actions of individuals and or institutional practices. This includes claims for anthropological harm that conflate the actions of particular individuals with the discipline. Alongside the potential harm in blaming anthropology, indiscriminately, a form of public anthropology may be gleaned: a mandate emerges to attend to spaces which presage this furore. The discipline is being ‘re-tasked’ robustly with its own huge remit to avoid damage in the studies of all peoples. This is extended to detrimental spaces that are revealed in academia, structural or evident, for which anthropology must be made to take culpability, particularly so in certain contemporary high-profile incidents.