Demands of the Day

On the Logic of Anthropological Inquiry

Rabinow Paul, Stavrianakis Anthony

"Demands of the Day" asks about the logical standards and forms that should guide ethical and experimental anthropology in the twenty-first century. Anthropologists Paul Rabinow and Anthony Stavrianakis do so by taking up Max Weber's notion of the "demands of the day". Just as the demand of the day for anthropology decades ago consisted of thinking about fieldwork, today, they argue, the demand is to examine what happens after, how the experiences of fieldwork are gathered, curated, narrated, and ultimately made available for an anthropological practice that moves beyond mere ethnographic description. Rabinow and Stavrianakis draw on experiences from an innovative set of anthropological experiments that investigated how and whether the human and biological sciences could be brought into a mutually enriching relationship. Conceptualizing the anthropological and philosophic ramifications of these inquiries, they offer a bold challenge to contemporary anthropology to undertake a more rigorous examination of its own practices, blind spots, and capacities, in order to meet the demands of our day.

About the Author

Paul Rabinow is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author or coauthor of many books, most recently "The Accompaniment" and "Designing Human Practices", both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Anthony Stavrianakis received his PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

"This short volume is another installment – perhaps the capstone – of what, without doubt, has been the most important effort during the first decade of the new century to experiment with recasting the emblematic research paradigm at the heart of modern anthropology's identity. Fieldwork remains, with its basic forms and values intact, but without its regulative mythologies. We have here instead, under the primary influences of Max Weber and John Dewey, a different way of thinking and doing anthropological research reflexively engaged, through working collaborations of variable success inside, alongside, and outside ambitious techno-scientific assemblages that are rooted in regimes of truth and modernity with which anthropology must ever contend in kinship" – George Marcus, University of California, Irvine

"Scholars in the field will find here a cornucopia of ideas to use in addressing problems of their own. The question of what it might mean for anthropological research to be a form of ethical practice has been raised by a number of authors recently, and this is a highly sophisticated and distinctive response" – James Laidlaw, University of Cambridge

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