The Ends of Anthropology: 2014 in U.S. Sociocultural Anthropology

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I trace the operations of a moral optimism and a skepticism that lie, uneasily, at the foundation of sociocultural anthropology. As other authors of year‐in‐review pieces have noted, anthropology is motivated by a moral optimism pointing toward the possibilities of an ethically and politically better life. Equally as fundamental, I argue, is a rigorous skepticism interrogating the shifting conditions that give life to anthropology's possibility. Here, I follow the productive tension between these two stances through the sociocultural anthropology of 2014, loosely grouping that work under the rubrics of “ends,” “immediacy,” “ecology,” and “refusal.” Throughout, I make a push for increased attention to our ethic of skepticism as means of tempering the discipline's moral optimism. [optimism, skepticism, immediacy, connection, year in review, sociocultural anthropology]