ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows an important and counter-intuitive point that anthropological thought in recent decades has converged with neoliberal thought in abandoning the sort of systematic analysis that had been important in anthropology and economics from the 1940s through the 1970s. This convergence is counter-intuitive because contemporary anthropology almost uniformly rejects the rational-actor models that are important in much of economics and portrays neoliberalism in a bad light, sometimes implicitly but often explicitly. This book points out the ways in which recent anthropology parallels neoliberalism in isolating specific actors, both intimate social groups and individuals, is salutary. It helps them to confront our contradictory stances, on the one hand intensely radical, critical of inequality and suffering, aware of pervasive power, and on the other hand poorly equipped to analyse entire constellations and operations of power.
