ABSTRACT
This chapter extends the Association of Social Anthropologists’ commitment, as an association now welcoming members from all countries, to strengthening communication and mutual understanding within a global community of anthropologists. The chapter is devoted to a little more space to discussing the case for welcoming the pluralism in building a global anthropological community. The Wenner-Gren Foundation has provided consistent support for both earlier and later efforts to construct a world community of anthropologists, as Leslie Aiello illustrated in her opening address to the Manchester congress. The world anthropologies movement simply seeks to enhance the likelihood that current ideas will be subjected to the widest possible range of questioning from the diversity of perspectives that the global anthropological community can offer. From the perspective of Spanish politicians and intellectuals such as the philosopher Ortega y Gasset joining the European Economic Community was the ‘solution’ to what they perceived as a problem of Spanish ‘backwardness’ relative to northwestern Europe.
