•  Varenne, Hervé [forthcoming] "Anthropology in the United States for America and Beyond." in Research Handbook on the Anthropology of Education: Practices and methods. Edited by Margaret Eisenhart. Edward Elgar Publishing

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with thanks to Ray McDermott who played with "applied anthropology" at the February 2015 conference at Teachers College. ( )

Given the charge given to anthropology in 1860, and then again in 1960 (and then again yesterday):

Explaining/accounting/...ing forThe occurrence of similar inventions in areas widely apart. (Boas 1887)

or

The occurence of similar [practices in poverty] in areas [widely] apart

Then, what is an anthropologist to do, given their position when they start, as they proceed, and later?

 

  1. On my/our/their positionalities: who is the anthropologist's "OTHER"? or, better,
    1. which non-anthropologists (not me/not us) make a different as far as we know?
      1. "significant others" (social psychology, Sullivan, etc.) and differences that make a difference (Bateson)
    2. and how would we know that "they" (and which one) have made a difference?
    3. how would we know what difference has been made (things highlighted to caricature; things made invisible)?
  2. a systemic (structural) autoethnography of ethnography in the settings that authorize it (universities, funding agencies, etc.)
  3. an autoethnography of the proposed (by the anthropologists) usage to be put for ethnography and of what we have observed of what usage as actually been made by our consociates within the university and beyond.