ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the claims to disciplinary relevance that have become dominant in anthropology in the last decades, most particularly those which are rooted in postmodernism and poststructuralism. It considers explicit theoretical orientations and dominance in current anthropology, and thus their translation into implicit dispositions informing anthropological writing and arguments. The chapter looks at some of the implications that postmodernism and poststructuralism have had for the way in which anthropologists came to understand theory-making, the choice of field site and that central claim of the discipline, holism. It takes the example of postsocialism to give flesh to proposals for a renewed engagement with a middle-level social theorising about social relations and processes of institutionalisation, the sort of approach advocated for work in a different context by Jeffrey H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci. Postmodernist and poststructuralist anthropologists legitimised their position in discipline by claiming that their approach allowed a new freedom in choosing field sites, concepts and writing styles.
