With permission of the Midwest Japan Seminar, Japan Foundation and host at Ohio Wesleyan University, here is the Youtube link to the hour-long conversation recently between long-time friends and colleagues, Prs David Plath and Ezra Vogel. Hearing first-hand of their early years in the field and in Japanese Studies circles is eye-opening for one and all, no matter your scholarly generation or genealogy. Feel free to share widely with others.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
new book, "An Anthropology of Anthropology"
This 372 page book comes from an anthropologist in Hawai'i. The PDF can be downloaded at no cost. A print edition can be ordered after June 1 at the latest. His subject is "public anthropology" - using anthropology methods and data to solve social problems with the environment, society, justice, food, education, health, and so on. He says that anthropology has many insights, but usually only is a spectator to watch the world; not to apply the insight to solve big or complicated problems.
Some of the testimonials from noted anthropologists, selectively appended below, give some sense of the book.
<><><>text and link of the book announcement<><><>
| ...to download a free (open access) copy of An Anthropology of Anthropology as well as see what 35 prominent anthropologists from Australia, Canada, France, Norway, United Kingdom and United States say about it (including Philippe Bourgois, Paul Farmer, Didier Fassin, George Marcus, and Laura Nader). https://books.publicanthropology.org/an-anthropology-of-anthropology.html This link can be used by anyone, anytime, anywhere to freely download the book. Please forward this link to interested colleagues and students. If you lose the link, you can readily obtain it from the new, updated publicanthropology website at www.publicanthropology.org. |
Public Anthropology: An Open Access Series
c/o 45-045 Kamehameha Hwy., Kaneohe, HI 96744
= APPENDED NOTES =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= [some comments by well-known anthropology colleagues]
Starting with a critical state of the art, he then defends and illustrates an alternative paradigm, which would involve a radical transformation of the way in which the academia considers its responsibility toward society. Rich in numerous case studies,
==========careerism in which quantity has replaced quality, in which creativity and path-breaking ideas have become a relic of the past. Borofsky makes a strong plea for redirecting anthropology into the world beyond the academy that is our object of study in order to produce knowledge that has a real impact on others
==========at a time when it needs to convey its insights to those beyond the discipline. It needs to ask big questions that matter to others. Rob Borofsky asks why cultural anthropology falls short of this potential. In his search to answer this question, he challenges the university-based contexts that shape the field—what == Note: jirei? if not rooted on campus then what alt vantage points.
==========written almost nothing about conditions of work, patronage, funding, institutional hierarchy in the academy—that is, the power relations under which anthropological writing is actually produced. Robert Borofsky is one of the few who's had the requisite courage to do so.
==========Borofsky catches a sea change in the discipline's perception of itself.
==========inclined to agree on the paramount need for the field to work at building an explicit consensus about what an anthropology degree signals to the world and also agree that the standards of accountability we set for ourselves go well beyond biblio-metrics to include the ways in which our work contributes to a more just and sustainable global community. EDWARD LIEBOW, Executive Director of AAA
==========the faith that Rob Borofsky places in what anthropologists can do in bringing professional and activist roles together—what I termed in the 1990s 'circumstantial activism'—for the benefit of both publics and anthropology.
==========moving past the "do no harm" seemingly neutral stance of the academy, to a more proactive "do good!" model of anthropology with no apologies.
==========He asks tough questions about individual accountability, ethics, and self-interests. Has anthropology made real intellectual breakthroughs in recent decades? He confronts anthropologists asking them to reassess and to renew our social contract with the public good
=========="Reach out to others or else become irrelevant!" is Rob Borofsky's take home message for American cultural anthropologists. He believes the discipline has shot itself in the foot: producing abstruse publications on topics of little value to the broader world, read only by an insular anthropological audience, and written primarily for the sake of narrow professional advancement.
=========="The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame." Sir Salman Rushdie, British-Indian novelist and essayist
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