ABSTRACT
In the past decades public engagement has been marked by ambivalence within the circles of academic anthropology. Prominent anthropologists such as Nancy ScheperHughes (1995, 2009), Julian MacClancy (1996), Thomas Hylland Eriksen (2006) and Michael Herzfeld (2009) are increasingly calling for a more publicly engaged anthropology. However, a benchmark report produced in 2006 by the UK Economic and Social Research Council noted that the ‘invisibility’ of anthropology in public engagement was not mainly due to a lack of anthropologists actually participating in public life. Rather anthropology was invisible because anthropologists did not readily identify themselves as ‘anthropologists’, preferring the title of ‘expert’.
