1. Vincent Velasquez
Anthropology Capstone | MON
Scoggin
As Anthropology continues its pursuit of understanding of a world constantly
experiencing change, many have shared doubts about the future of anthropology.In his paper,
“The End of Anthropology, Again: On the Future of an In/Discipline,” John Comaroff calls to
question whether or not Anthropology can still maintain relevance in a world that is continuously
producing new knowledge using methods that have slowly been eroded from its own field and to
use in other disciplines. Along with Comaroff, Matti Bunzl and MwendaNtarangwi are just two
other Anthropologists who, over the years, have discussed this crisis of identity, each with
varying perspectives. They are only a few among many who continue to discuss what can be
done to save a field of study in danger and what pitfalls can be avoided to prevent it’s untimely
demise.
Many of the woes that plague the field of Anthropology are based in constant shifts
within ideology. In “The End of Anthropology”, Comaroff calls to point“several ills” that
currently pose a danger to the field of anthropology. One factor is the loss of its trademark tool:
the ethnography (2010: 525). According to Comaroff, the tool of ethnography has become a tool
that is not only used by anthropologists, but also being used by law firms and sports teams as
well as other fields of study. By having its primary means of research removed from its core,
Comaroff and otherswonder if the field can support itself through theoretical basis as well as
surviving potentiallywithout its primary means of conducting research. A second ill that
coincides with the first is that anthropology does not reside in a set core of “empirical terrains”.

2. With ethnography no longer strictly being used by Anthropology, Comaroff states that
individuals in other disciplines have found great success using ethnography, sometimes to a
greater extent than those practicing Anthropology; this is primarily due to the user having a
closer affinity to their subject material as well as greater knowledge and experience with said
subject matter (Comaroff 2010:526). Finally, the last ill that Comaroff speaks on is the idea that
because anthropology holds such ability toweave in and out of so many subject matters
(“anything and everything, anywhere and everywhere”), Anthropology may be viewed as serving
no purpose when others can perform just as well, if not better;it is for this reason that other
“hard” sciences see this a weak link in Anthropologies methodological and theoretical chain.
And while all may appear bleak, others, including Comaroff, offer possible solutions to
remedying these ills.
Comaroff asks of those working in the field of anthropology to step back and question
what is important to the discipline both methodically and theoretically. This fear of identity loss
stems from a lack of distinction within the encompassing field of social science and that much of
what is produced within the discipline amounts to nothing more than metanarrative that produces
discourse rather than discussion (Comaroff 2010: 528). And while many fear this lack of
distinction, there are those that embrace the idea in a different manner, that a subject can be
explained using several sets of data to complete an image of a subject matter, thus lending itself
to greater understanding (Blanchard, 2006: 3). While there are those that say sociality and
biology can be viewed together with one another (Blanchard, 2006: 5), there are those that feel
that excessive fracturing of data and partial empiricism does more harm than it does good
(Comaroff, 2010: 528). This fractal empiricism, according to Comaroff, leads to a lazy analysis
of the phenomenal world and only covers what needs to be covered,conveying a generalized

3. idea. I believe that Comaroff is seeing those who subscribe to this method as people who tend to
fetishize a need to force a subject to be empirical, attempting to shoehorn a reality that forces a
subject to have some ground in reality.
As a practicing anthropologist, this dichotomy can be seen firsthand among fellow
colleagues where lines are drawn on what is appropriate towards their focus; either the social or
the biological. There are those who feel that theory is unnecessary simply for the fact that
because their area of study simply falls within the realm of biology. There are also those who
also feel they may skirt around any idea of imposing biology into a cultural narrative or at the
least, cover the minimum. Comaroff makes the point that as anthropologists, it should be
generally understood that Anthropology should not be defined by its “topical horizons” but that
our discipline is a way of creating new forms of knowledge, thus it should act as a guide in
helping determine what is appropriate (2010: 530). Discussions can then become actual
discussions rather than being relegated to the minutia of pettiness.
Mwenda Ntarangwi, a student of Kenyatta University in Kenya, had become interested in
anthropology after a professor introduced him to a Cultural Anthropology textbook by Carol and
Melvin Ember. From the outright, Mwenda became so captivated by the topic of anthropology
that shortly after reading the text (the fastest he had had ever read!), he changed from pursuing a
Masters in Sociolinguistics to Anthropology. Mwenda’s claim for making such an immediate
and sudden change is that Anthropology provided him with a framework that allowed him to
better understand the themes of social justice in the music of African musician by the name of
RemmyOngala (Ntarangwi 2010). When Mwenda left to pursue a graduate program in
Anthropology in America, he recalls the journal that he kept of his daily interactions with both
students and locals at the time. Subscribing to the school of Clifford Geertz, Mwenda sees

4. cultural not being simply locked in one’s head, but rather as symbols that act as vehicles of
culture (Ntarangwi 2010). He goes on to further acknowledge that even through “culture” is still
heavily debated, that anthropologist such as Victor Turner and Geertz may share theoretical
schools of thought that do no line up with one another, a combination of the two present him the
necessary vantage for his unique “outsider-insider” approach; using schools of thought provided
through Western school of thought, Mwenda uses this to observe the idea of Western “Other”
and it’s projection onto the “rest”. According to Mwenda, the idea of “Other” is viewed by those
who are non-Western as a construction of the west that puts the observer in a position of power,
dominance and analytical dominance (Ntarangwi 2010).
While anthropology has strived to create new forms of thought, avenues of research and
bring into question that which makes us human, Eric Wolf suggests that it has not always been
immediately easy and at times questionable. During the early 20th
century, a shift was made from
seemingly sporadic observations with no discernible rhyme or reason to what would be known at
the time then as Functional Sociology. At the epicenter of this school of thought were
BronislawMalinowsky and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, two British social anthropologists that
desired a more regimented observation would help produce “acceptable generalisations” (Wolf,
1999: 126).
My reason for choosing Comaroff’s paper, “The End of Anthropology” was because I
believe he asks extremely crucial issues that are facing the field of anthropology as a whole. I
had wanted to write this paper for quite some time, but never had a real idea of how I wanted to
approach it. A few semesters prior, a fellow classmate of mine and I would sit and discuss, what
we felt, was potentially a lack of direction facing the field of anthropology as a whole. This came
at a time when many of the questions that Comaroff was postulating were circulating

5. anthropology blogs, websites and other forums of conversation. Many had become concerned
that that field as a whole was being watered down by the intrusion of other fields of study; that
anthropology was no longer anthropology, but rather biology with anthropological discourse
being haphazardly attached on to it or geology that used archaeological practices to obtain the
necessary information. Comaroff argues that while this may be true, the fact is that anthropology
is not exclusive to one singular topic. It’s very idea of holding on to this exclusivity in fact does
not make good anthropology! A main reason that anthropologists are so versatile is because we
must obtain our knowledge from those that are well versed in subjects of biology, chemistry,
economics and so forth. While this can be seen and/or treated as weakness in the world of
academia, in reality, it makes anthropologist a crucial link between the worlds of academia and
the public.
Another concern that was shared was that Anthropology had appeared taken more of a
direction that was reliant on description rather than empirical evidence (sans Archaeology, which
even Comaroff discusses says he will not discuss (2010: 525) ). While we both had strong
feelings about Anthropology and the importance of it, it felt void of any type of skill set,
ethnography being the only tangible tool in our tool kit. While there a several fields of study
within Anthropology as a whole, and those can even be subdivided even further into more
specific fields, it became a growing concern to us that Anthropology almost had nothing to claim
as its own. And even though we remained hopeful about the usage and praxis of anthropology, a
sense of dread could palpably be felt among us that other fields of science and even theory were
some home lacking or even missing from our each of own tool kits.
I came to discuss with you the idea of curricula at other colleges because I wanted to see
how a curriculum was created and ultimately distributed to its students. I find it quite helpful that

6. I have been able to learn, historically, the role that certain individuals played in crafting what we
know today as Anthropology. While one person may not agree with Herbert Spencer’s
description for society being like an organism (1860), it still stirs disciplinary discourse that
helps construct better definition of what it means to be cultural, or biological, or even both. As
much as many do not care for Spencer’s ideology, I still claim to have a soft spot for him being
at least tackling such an issue at a time when science was heavily scrutinized and more often
than not pushed aside for being rubbish. And while that ideology may not play a role in today’s
world, it still provides good foundation for at least what Anthropology should try to avoid. I am
essentially saying that while metanarratives should be kept to a minimum, talk of theory and
methodology should not be completely disregard. Perhaps I am confusing the two for one in the
same, perhaps this is because how many, not just outside Anthropology but within, tend to view
methodology; as theory that is baseless because it is able to transform into the social, the
medical, the historical, the biological, the ritualistic and so on. Clashing ideologies wind up not
gelling with one another almost because it appears that they cannot. Others attempt to view all
views holistically in order to reach a complete narrative.

7. Bibliography
Blanchard, Sean
2006. “Obscurantist Holism Versus Clear-Cut Analysis: Will Anthropology Obviate the
Biology-Culture Divide?” Dialetical Anthropology, Volume 30, pp. 1 – 25.
Comaroff, John
2010. “The End of Anthropology, Again: On the Future of an In/Discipline.” American
Anthropologist, Volume 112, Issue 4, pp. 524-538.
Comaroff, Jean and John
2009. “Ethnography on an awkward scale: Postcolonial anthropology and the violence of
abstraction.”
Keesing, Roger
1987. “Anthropology as Interpretive Quest.” Current Anthropology, Volume 28, Number
2, pp. 161 – 176.
Ntarangwi, Mwenda
2010. Reversed Gaze: An African Ethnography of American Anthropology.University of
Illinois Publishing. Illinois. United States of America.
Verdon, Michel
2006. “Boas and Holism: A Textual Analysis.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences,
Volume 36, Number 3, pp. 276 – 302.
Wolf, Eric
1999. “Anthropology Among the Powers”. Social Anthropology, Volume 7, Issue 2, pp.
121 -134. European Association of Social Anthropologists.