ABSTRACT

Why are genealogies of the present important, and why are critically humanist sensibilities valuable? During a period of theoretical flux and radical questioning, it can be useful for a field such as cultural anthropology to examine its recent past and its larger trajectory. Current directions often proliferate as permutations on general themes. But in the push for individual distinction within established traditions and newer additions, the larger impetus of the field can get neglected. In current theoretical and ethnographic developments as well as received historical ones, the valorization of subjective diversity and the critique of inequality and disempowerment remain important for cultural anthropology. The complementary relationship between these basic strains has been herein configured as parts of a critically humanist perspective.