"This volume explores the opportunities and obstacles that face anthropologists reaching out to wider publics through engagement with media industries, art, performance, blogging, social media, and open, cooperative sharing of material. Through a breadth of case studies, the authors offer a cautiously optimistic vision of the challenges and opportunities for public anthropological scholarship in the twenty-first century." · Mark Allen Peterson, Miami University
"A timely collection of chapters probing the heart of contemporary anthropology and engaging with the position of anthropologists in a global society where non-scientific 'experts' dominate the public sphere. These fascinating case studies from all over the world offer reflections on what 'public anthropology' can mean." · Katrien Pype, KU Leuven University and University of Birmingham
Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Because anthropologists are often expected to and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices.
Sarah Pink is Professor of Design and Media Ethnography at RMIT University.
Simone Abram is Reader at the University of Durham and at Leeds Beckett University.