Introduction The Anthropology of Grace and the Grace of Anthropology

Abstract

This introduction calls for an ‘anthropology of grace’, arguing that an ethnographically informed theory of grace will offer valuable interpretive tools not only to scholars of religion but also to anthropologists of law, economics, and power. Focusing on four interlinked dimensions of grace—its Christianity, sociality, temporality, and potentiality—we highlight the relevance of this concept to local and global politics, particularly in encounters across difference. Building on analyses of what has been called ‘the Christianity of anthropology’, we suggest not only that Euro-Christian scholarship is indebted to the idea of grace but that its explicit invocation can propel emerging debates on time, sociality, and progressive politics. An interrogation of this theo-political concept reveals submerged conceptual assumptions and sheds new light on anthropology’s decades-old investment in reciprocity (and its discontents).