Comments on: Anthropology and Enlightenment: Reflections on the ASA Conference in Edinburgh

By: maiagreen

maiagreen — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 10:21:36 +0000

And in what language?

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 01:12:34 +0000

Will the Strathern, Western and Gregory lectures be published somewhere accessible to folk outside the ivory tower?

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:43:20 +0000

“The challenge is taking them out of the coffee shop and into new spaces. And perhaps breaking down some of the stylistic forms which box us in conversationally and stop others from hearing what we say.”

Well said Maia. I could not agree more.

By: maiagreen

maiagreen — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 18:51:10 +0000

Thanks for the comments. Completely agree Jonathan that the coffee shop milieu was great for the kinds of conversations which reach across and outwards. The challenge is taking them out of the coffee shop and into new spaces. And perhaps breaking down some of the stylistic forms which box us in conversationally and stop others from hearing what we say.

By: Jonathan Spencer

Jonathan Spencer — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 15:32:45 +0000

I speak from a far-from-impartial position, but I have a strong sense that people came away from this event with far more of a smile on their faces than is normally the case. Some of this might be the city, which was at its most handsome in the late June light. Some of it might have been the theme, which I thought provided some of the most memorable moments – Marilyn Strathern’s re-reading of Hume in the context of a historicized reflection on the protean word “relation”, delivered to a spellbound audience of at least 500, was a particular highlight, but so too was Kath Weston’s stunning use of Adam Smith and John Gregory’s reflections on sympathy on the opening morning of the conference proper. Some of it was almost certainly a product of the congenial links between the three Scottish departments that co-hosted it. But I’d like to think the real source of all those happy faces was our self-conscious decision to invoke the idea of the Scottish Enlightenment as a milieu to be enjoyed – a time of conversations in coffee shops and drinking establishments, of which there were plenty available in the streets that linked the different conference venues. I suspect those settings might have been the places where anthropology was reaching out and meeting other people and other conversations in the way that Maia would like.

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 23:15:34 +0000

Maia, you conclude with an excellent question. To those of us who have found livelihoods outside the academy, it quickly becomes apparent that the theories we debate as anthropologists address issues that affect all sorts of people, who often respond to them in ways that overlap our own. As Marcus and Fischer observe in Culture as Critique, we now do research and share our findings with others who include journalists, policy-makers,historians, and other social sciences who are often interested in the same topics that interest us. And unless we learn to speak with them, as opposed to confining our conversations to our own tribe and only speaking _against_them, our dreams of influence remain fantasies.