Gute zitate aus engaging anthropology

"This trickle apart – and only a few names have been omitted – the best anthropologists were able to do in order to engage people outside academic circles consisted in writing good textbooks, which is fine, but it is not enough." (p. 7)

"The discipline had become self-contained." (p. 7)

"Perhaps the main explanation is simply that academic education tends to destroy our ability to write well." (p. 15)

"With few exceptions, the examples of successful public engagement that I have discussed above were published at least half a century ago." (p. 20)

"What historians do is to tell stories. What anthropologists do is to convert stories into analysis." (p. 21)

"[…] but on the whole, anthropological discourse has withdrawn into itself." (p. 23)

"[…]; and the assault of postmodernism on any kind of truth claim was the last thing anthropology needed, saturated as it already was with self-doubt." (p. 23)

"[…], it can hardly be denied that to some extent, the isolation is self-imposed." (24)

"In fact, in retrospect it is easy to see that postmodernism did considerable damage to anthropology." (p. 25)

"Cocooning also has a social dimension, which may be peculiar to anthropology." (p. 26)

"To put it differently: in spite of its considerable growth, anthropology still cultivates its self-identity as a counter-culture, its members belonging to a kind of secret society whose initiates possess exclusive keys for understanding, indispensable for making sense of the world, but alas, largely inaccessible to outsiders." (p. 28)

"Aware of this reputation, anthropologists sometimes lose themselves in epistemological hypochondria, and when they don't, at least they make sure that their isolation from the rest of society is not broken." (p. 32)

"The very idea of anthropology as a cultural (auto)critique, defended by many of those who see the potential of a public anthropology, presupposes that there is a great demand for cultural self-criticism out