Up Close and Personal ― On Peripheral Perspectives and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge

Shore and Trnka (social anthropology, U. of Auckland, New Zealand) bring together anthropologists from New Zealand, Australia, and Britain for 12 first-person narratives on the nature of social anthropological inquiry and knowledge production, focusing on what distinguishes anthropology as a professional practice, how it has changed, whether the geographical location of its practitioners affect the ways it is practiced, what innovations and directions are reshaping the field, and how anthropologists engage with problems facing societies around the world and how they understand that engagement. Through answers to questions posed by the editors, they describe their key discoveries, what attracted them to anthropology, how they have shaped the discipline, and how the discipline has impacted their work, considering not only fieldwork, but also personal, historical, and scholarly influences and their roles as social activists and public intellectuals. They examine issues such as the ethics and politics of activism, how anthropological knowledge is made, how its self-understanding and professional identity is changing, the nature of discovery and how lived experience is transformed into ethnographic and scientific data, and how the field reproduces itself and the role of personalities and personal relationships in the process. Each narrative begins with information on the author's fieldwork, positions, major works, and degrees. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Cris Shore is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland.