Original Articles

‘Anthropological futures’? Thoughts on social research and the ethics of engagement

Published in: Anthropology Southern Africa
Volume 35 , issue 3-4 , 2012 , pages: 100–104

DOI: 10.1080/23323256.2012.11500029

Author(s): Shannon Morreira Department of Social Anthropology,

Keywords: Anthropological futures , ethics , structural violence , anthropology at home , alterity , mutuality

Abstract

This article was presented as the keynote address at the 2012 Anthropology Southern Africa Conference. The theme of the conference was Southern African Anthropological Futures: Opportunities and Constraints, and as such in this piece I consider some of the themes I see emerging in Southern African anthropology, from my position as a nascent practitioner. Specifically, I examine the ethical difficulties raised by the discipline's emphasis upon bringing to light the ways in which ordinary life unfolds in contexts of structural violence. I argue that the employment of an ‘ethics of care’ in these contexts carries a danger of alterity, but that this can be guarded against in particular ways. Some of these ways emerge in the second theme on which I focus: that of an extension of our approach to ‘the field’. I argue that the increasing tendency of anthropologists in southern Africa to study at home, in combination with the increasing tendency to maintain relationships with interlocuters over very extended periods of time, allows for the mobilisation of an ethics of mutuality rather than care.

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Points of Departure: reflections on Shannon Morreira's “keynote address: ‘Anthropological futures’?: Thoughts on social research and the ethics of engagement.” »