Anthropology Has One Job (On Genocide in the United States)

Abstract

In an introductory anthropology course, the instructor might provide a definition of anthropology similar to this: “Anthropology is the most scientific of the humanities, and it is the most humanistic of the sciences.” If something like that is said, it stems from a statement in Anthropology, a 1964 book by famed anthropologist Eric Wolf in which he attempted to define the discipline. Wolf’s approach came at a time when many anthropologists were attempting to intervene in the historical telling of the world.Footnote1 In particular, Wolf argued that non-Europeans were also participants in global, colonial processes. The value of Wolf’s voice—indeed, the value of most anthropology at the time—was that it offered a wide-scale view of human events for which the anthropologist was merely an observer, hence not responsible.