Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary
Both Rabinow and Marcus participated in the milestone collection Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Published in 1986, Writing Culture catalyzed a reassessment of how ethnographers encountered, studied, and wrote about their subjects. In the opening conversations of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary, Rabinow and Marcus take stock of anthropology’s recent past by discussing the intellectual scene in which Writing Culture intervened, the book’s contributions, and its conceptual limitations. Considering how the field has developed since the publication of that volume, they address topics including ethnography’s self-reflexive turn, scholars’ increased focus on questions of identity, the Public Culture project, science and technology studies, and the changing interests and goals of students. Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary allows readers to eavesdrop on lively conversations between anthropologists who have helped to shape their field’s recent past and are deeply invested in its future.
Paul Rabinow is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary, A Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicles (with Talia Dan-Cohen), and Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment.
George E. Marcus is the Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. His books include Ethnography through Thick and Thin; Ocasião: The Marquis and the Anthropologist, A Collaboration (with Fernando Mascarenhas); and Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (with Michael M. J. Fischer).
James Faubion is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Rice University. He is the author of The Shadows and Lights of Waco: Millennialism Today and Modern Greek Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism.
Tobias Rees is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at McGill University.