Emergent anthropologies

Abstract

In my work with George Marcus we have sought to develop a particular design of and for anthropological projects that allows ethnography to operate as a means to engage analytical perspectives in the making, perspectives that take form prospectively, perspectives that seek to shape contingencies in, of, and about the future. What this demands is that we build our ethnographic project within pre-existing and/or emerging experiments pursued by our subjects. It further requires that we draw on a range of intellectual modalities that intersect, overlap, or are entirely indistinguishable from “ethnographic” method operating within technocratic and scientific settings. In other words, we seek to enter settings in which the “subjects” themselves experiment creatively with the intellectual exigencies of ethnography.