Writing the Anthropological Imagination for Public Engagement

Abstract

Anthropology off the Shelf: Anthropologists on Writing (Waterston and Vesperi 2011[2009]) is a truly remarkable book. Reading it and thinking through its implications are particularly timely now that I find myself soul-searching over the direction that I’d like to follow at this stage of my life. I imagine myself writing beyond the boundaries of standard social scientific reportage, analysis, and theorization. I suppose, in some modest respects. I’ve already transcended some of these boundaries by having dared to write in a critically reflexive voice. Moreover, one could argue that I’ve troubled the boundaries of the established tradition by daring to envision the discipline becoming a vehicle for decolonizing knowledge and its applications in the world (Harrison 2008, 2010). These inroads, however, are not enough. I have begun to ponder strategies that will allow me to take at least some of my anthropological writing off the shelf. This entails that I take my writing more seriously, and perhaps even claim “writer” among the multiple identities that make up who and what I am.