Comments on: An Anthropologist among Future Seekers

By: deepa

deepa — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 07:17:45 +0000

Pardon my delayed response, John. Something I haven’t really had a chance to parse in any of what I’m posting is the question of how far off all these futures are–though part of the “clash” of ideas is the overlap of horizons or scales of time: those half a step ahead, those fantastically advanced, those nostalgic for what could be, even those mourning the futures not yet actualized for some–but dying for others. I don’t know Springer’s work, and will look it up now, though I suppose I also resist the idea that day-to-day survival somehow means an eschewal of far future horizons. Perhaps just a very different relationship to far futures, configured paradoxically for the near-term, and through more predictable, concrete, connective arrangements than we might typically account for? A theme I hope I’ll be able to pick up in a subsequent post.

By: deepa

deepa — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 07:31:55 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Julian. I suppose much depends on how we bracket off "the present"? We're sort of always I think looking for the historical (far or near) roots of things; we could think of the work of contextualization itself as an excavation and reassembly of the present in a way that makes analytical or cultural sense. We're also as you say cognizant of theoretical movements pushing in future directions, but actually also more: I'm thinking of Jim Faubion's work on millenialism, Miyazaki on hope and capitalist utopias, and Llerena Searle on narratives about the future driving Indian real estate markets--to offer just a few examples. Representations of the present thus always do gather together more than the present.. but I'm not sure I'd call them "futuristic" for that, no. Although your thinking ahead of fieldwork might well be a practice of near-futurism, indeed! I like a lot Elizabeth Povinelli's observation that "the future is not in the future, but in the myriad contradictions that cannot endure the present intersection and thus open the here to somewhere else" ... even if that, too, gestures to "somewhere else" by situating us quite firmly in the here-and-right-now. (Thanks for the excuse to post these links, by the way; they help round off the post!)

By: John McCreery

John McCreery — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 02:58:39 +0000

Deepa, this is, indeed, a great post. I hope that it stimulates the discussion it deserves. I offer two thoughts.

First, the future begins tomorrow. Some futures are near. Others still distant but looming. I think on the one hand of the Japanese advertising creatives whom I study and with whom I have worked. Some of the best at what they do say that where they want to be is “a half step ahead.” A step ahead may be too far, too soon. Half a step is where what people are starting to think about and may not be fully conscious of can be found.

Second, I am now reading P.W. Springer’s Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. In it we discover military/defense-industry thinkers whose task is to look decades into the future and to turn ideas inspired or borrowed from science fiction into realities. Here the challenge is not only to understand the thinking of people whose horizon for a thinkable future is far more distant than those of the poor who must grapple with day-to-day survival but to think seriously about possibilities that, because they involve the military, anthropologists may be reluctant to consider.

By: Julian Melamede

Julian Melamede — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 14:45:17 +0000

Hi, great article, found it really useful as food for thought to think about my own thesis research. You say that anthropology is often concerned with drawing on its data to observe the present, but I was thinking, is anthropological research not always rather reactive and/or prospective? Although we use the ethnographic present as a starting point for reflection, the insights that we draw by linking the ethnographic present to wider theoretical trends, or using historical data to better understand the context of the ethnographical present, are always different from the ethnographic present as such. It’s almost like the project of representing the present is in itself a futuristic endeavor, i.e. one that draws on personal aspirations and imaginings to interpret the present we witness.
Sorry if I am not being really clear but I myself am trying to discern this space in which aspirations/future imaginings are negotiated with present conditions, and finding it hard to discuss. Also, not having done any fieldwork I can only start tackling this topic from an analytical and philosophical perspective, which may be a practice of futurism in and of itself too 🙂