1 © 2011 Ryan Anderson This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ The Subject(s) of Anthropology (a short essay) Ryan Anderson What is anthropology? What does anthropology tell us about the world around us? What claims to truth does this “anthropology” have, and how can those claims be challenged, evaluated, and measured against other forms of knowledge? Anthropology is not as monolithic and unified as it may seem to a first year undergraduate who sits through her/his first class on the subject—despite the cohesive narratives that many introductory textbooks present. Still, certain ideals about anthropology—as promulgated by particular institutions, organizations, and individuals—do exist. Anthropologists have their particular area of interest: they study humans, of course. But not just any humans; historically speaking, anthropologists have made the non-western Others their intellectual stock and trade. This academic and methodological focus is what Michel- Rolph Trouillot calls the “Savage slot,” and it needs some dramatic rethinking if anthropology is to remain a viable mode of inquiry. The anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn once wrote, “Seen from the outside, anthropological activities look, at best, harmlessly amusing, at worst, pretty idiotic” (Kluckhohn 1961: 13). A few pages later in the same text he also wrote, “Studying primitives enables us to see ourselves better” (Kluckhohn 1961: 16). This was in his famous little book Mirror for Man, which was, according to the 1961 Preface, meant as a book “for the layman, not for the carping professional.” According to Kluckhohn, anthropology is perfectly suited to discover the common ground that exists between “human beings of all tribes and nations” (1961: 9). Why—of all disciplines from sociology to political science—is anthropology so well suited for this project? What is it about anthropology that makes this bridging of cross-cultural difference possible? It