In a reference article, that raises the issue of anthropology in Slovakia, in particular, but, implicitly, in post-communist societies in general, Bojan Baskar asks: "how to become social anthropologist in these countries of Eastern and Central Europe where socialist and communist regimes have collapsed one after the other during the last decade?" (Baskar 1998: 114) What Baskar's question allude at, are "the institutional foundations" of the discipline that are capable of producing "anthropologists". Without underestimating this question I would allow myself to ask not how but why to become anthropologist in these countries? In other words, what is - but also what should be, perhaps - the purpose of anthropology concerned with one's own society in transition?
The domain of anthropology - meaning both "pure" anthropology and
the ad libitum anthropologization of different, more or less contiguous
sciences and domains - is a polyphonic construction, the work of certain individuals
and institutions of different profiles and different purposes and interests.
Without going into the analysis of these origins' variety, the question we have
to ask may be formulated as follows: what does make these diverse social actors,
coming from philology, history, sociology, philosophy, architecture, medicine,
etc., to declare their interests in and pursue academic activities that might
be included in the domain of anthropology – and usually are claimed as
such? To put it differently, what does constitute the shared attraction for
anthropology, what does its relative prestige consist in?
A first approach of a possible answer would be that the "will for anthropology"
is given by the explicit or implicit presupposition that this discipline provides
a chance for another encounter with social reality, the access to the "true"
reality. Thus, the discovery of (Western) anthropology, practically unknown
by us till 1990, represents the encounter with other social realities and, implicitly,
problems. From this point of view Baskar ironically states that "Western
anthropology represents a fascinating promise of cosmopolitan experiences, daring
theories, exoticism and bright future." (Baskar op. cit.: 119)
However, (Western) anthropology guides and legitimates also another perspective
on autochthonous realities. In this regard, the utilisation of anthropology
is divided, grosso modo, into a tendency for restoration that
re-evaluates and re-values a profound Romania hidden under the layers of mainly
communist but also pre-communist mystifications, and a deconstructive tendency,
current mostly in studies regarding identity, nationalism and ethnicity, that
starts to trace all, more or less pious, myths and other "lies".
For a whole series of disciplines enclosed for decades within their academic
borders, anthropology is also a privileged way for (re) opening towards and
(re) investment in the social, regarded mainly as significant diversity. It
is the case of history or architecture, of psychology or philology and even,
to a lesser degree, of medicine. Courses and/or researches in historical anthropology,
urban anthropology, ethno-psychology, cultural anthropology and cultural studies
are testimonies in this sense. In all of these cases is more about a certain
"anthropologization" than anthropology.
What appears, however, to be the most widely spread "anthropological"
enchantment is the growing interest for everyday and particular, tacitly invested
with the attributes of "the authentic". "Real" life seems
to be hidden at this level, therefore life stories, transcribed in oral histories
or reduced to plain testimonies, start to increase and receive an ever-growing
value. Even sociologists (urged, as a matter of fact, by the fashion of community
development studies) start to make use more often of "in-depth interviews"
and to turn to the myth of "anthropological type" of field to confer
more weight and, maybe, to re-evaluate the results of macro-social surveys.
So, it seems that anthropology is granted, to a certain extent, the characteristics
of a certain kind of esprit de finesse, thoughtful of differences and
allowing, therefore, judgements that are more refined and differentiated, more
close to "people's life". If things are as they seem to be then it
might be the case that the diffuse interest in anthropology is explained by
the fact that it provides a way for "being the odd one out", for taking
distance from the proximal dominant discourse, finally for dez-ideologization
- even if that might mean in fact, willy-nilly, uncritical subscription to other
dominant, more "distanced" but also more attractive discourses.
However, all these are nothing more than assumptions, the result of an extended
enough "participant observation" in the community of Romanian "anthropologists
of intent". The partial lack of communication and the almost complete lack
of systematic reflection on Romanian anthropology's premises and purpose render
the deeper knowledge on what unite this community, more difficult. This situation
is not likely to reach a solution by itself because the power games that permeate
the community - as in the case of every other academic community - are powerfully
dispersed. Apart from being polyphonic, the construction of Romanian anthropology
is also polycentric, every such, individual or institutional, germinating core
is constituted as a power centre, more or less inclined to stamp its trademark
to the whole domain, even before it comes into existence as such.
This temptation of anthropology, as it appears, uncertain and polyphonic, in
the Romanian context, does not seem to be far from what is considered to be
the vocation of anthropology at all times and everywhere. It is worth reminding
in this sense the opening statement of Marcus and Fishers' influential book,
Anthropology as Cultural Critique: "Twentieth-century social and
cultural anthropology has promised its still largely Western readership enlightment
on two fronts. The one has been the salvaging of distinct cultural forms of
life from process of apparent global westernisation. With both its romantic
appeal and its scientific intentions, anthropology has stood for the refusal
to accept this conventional perception of homogenisation towards a dominant
Western model. The other promise of anthropology, one less fully distinguished
and attended to then the first, has been to serve as a form of cultural critique
for ourselves. In using portraits of other cultural patterns to reflect self-critically
on our own ways, anthropology disrupts common sense and makes us re-examine
our taken for granted assumptions." (Marcus and Fisher 1986: 1) In Romania,
the temptation of anthropology seems to respond mostly to the first point, namely
the refusal to accept the conventional perception of homogenisation especially
the communist one, and in a lesser degree the western one that has made itself
present after the fall of communism. The promise of another encounter with reality
refers exactly to this (re) discovery of diversity beyond the common perception
of homogeneity and the dynamic aspects of social actors where only the existence
of passive adaptation to the system has been taken into consideration. Serguei
Sokolovski makes a similar point in the case of Russia: "One of the most
noticeable changes at the time (the Perestroika period, m.n.), was the turn
from portraying culture change almost exclusively in terms of accommodation
to mainstream to the study of resistance." (Sokolovski 2001: 8)
The text of Marcus and Fisher might provide us a bridge as well between what
seems to be the temptation of anthropology in Romania and what might be its
vocation. Therefore we will analyse the two directions identified by the authors,
naming them, concisely, the argument of the difference and the critical dimension.
Since it has traditionally been a study of the Other, anthropology is inseparable
from the issue of difference. The way of identifying and interpreting it is
not the same at all times and in all places. Thus, William Rosberry distinguishes
three main dimensions that are, grosso modo, also three ways of approaching
difference in the field of (particularly American) anthropology: "the three
dimensions can be seen to characterise a historical movement in U.S. anthropology
from the early twentieth century: concern for cultural relativism and pluralism
during the first four decades; concern for systematic connections among societies
during the decades after World War II, beginning with the postulation and the
study of evolutionary systems and culminating in the study of the formation
of non-western societies in the context of the expansion of world capitalism;
and, more recently, a perceived crisis of categories, assumptions, and practices."
(Rosberry 1992: 846-847)
In the following I take these three utilizations-stages of difference as points
of reference in trying to follow the way "the argument of the difference”
is situated in Romanian academic discourse.
In Rosberry's terms, the first dimensions of difference, the one centred on
relativism and pluralism, refers to the fact that "encounters with non-Western
societies illuminate other modes of being, other forms of property, other ways
of ordering social and political affairs organizing domestic life, or raising
children. Challenging the aura of naturalness that surrounds the institutions
and conventions of everyday life in the West, cross-cultural studies can make
a fundamental contribution to a liberal education. The encounter is often unsettling
to a Western sensibility, and the communicator of the encounter - the anthropologist
or multiculturalist, so to speak - plays the role of cultural critic."
(Rosberry op. cit.: 843-844)
In the case of Romania - as in the case of other "young nations" -
cultural particularity has a very different origin and purpose: it does not
emerge from comparison to other cultures and does not play the part of a "cultural
critique", but the part of cultural foundation. In other words, in this
case, difference is constructed as "specificity" founded on and as
the origin of people's collective identity. We might speak about an "ideology
of origins" in this case, as far as the permanent recourse to this specificity
and, thus legitimacy granting origin is a constitutive process of national construction.
(Mihailescu, 2001). An entire "diffuse ethnology" (Mihailescu 2000)
that has folklore at its centre, is going to play the role of défense
et ilustration of national specificity. A broad category of folklore scholars
continue to play this role, in more or less revisited and enlarged versions,
even in present days. Another category, which has come off from "classical"
folklore, has a rather esteticizing attitude that stress more the value and
significance of popular culture and leaves aside the issue of its origin-related
specificity. At the other extremity, a deconstructive fashion to throw out the
baby with the bath water, treating the entire popular culture as "social
invention" in order to become thus totally uninterested in it. Beyond these,
rather reactive than constructive tendencies, the main issue remains the fact
that the origin-driven perspective of the Romanian ethnology has left as heritage
a conceptual and methodological distaste for approaching the relations between
this culture and other ones from the area we refer to (the comparative instance,
thorough, remains Mircea Eliade), as well as the changes within this culture.
Consequently, present day Romanian ethnology is helpless regarding both the
integration of its classical object of study - oral culture - into the comparative
field of European ethnology, and its relation to the present society, be it
rural or not. It is not possible to break this deadlock apart from a profound
critical analysis of this "ideology of origin" that has been the base
of its constitution and to what is, consciously or not, still linked, or what
is rejected rather reactively than critically by it.
"A second dimension questions the 'otherness' of the Other and explores
connections between Western and non-western experience. (...) Rather than pointing
to other modes of being, this dimension (...) explores systematic connections
between ways of life and standards of living in the West and ways of life and
standards of living in Puerto Rico or Mexico or Sumatra. (...) Here too anthropologists
can play an important role as cultural critics, by serving as witnesses to the
empire itself, an empire denied in proclamations of a 'new world order', and
by exploring the connection between wealth and poverty, life and death, that
such ideological proclamations ignore." (Roseberry op. cit.: 844-845)
The situation in Romania is exactly the opposite: "ways of life and standards
of living in the West" are taken as reference points for questioning one's
own identity and "the connections" are limited to relations to West
as model. In a way this is about a late interiorisation of the discourse from
the sixties in terms of development/underdevelopment, a discourse that evaluates
differences in "ways of life and standards of living" between us and
them as underdevelopment, as social distance that need to be covered.
From a larger perspective, one may speak about an inversion of what Francoise
Paul-Levy (1986) terms "primitivist ideology". By that, humanity has
got an origin, a kind of "point of Archimedes" that allows interpreting
differences within Humanity entirely as differences in time and thus, in principle,
transitive; "primitive" societies are those which's state is the closest
to this origin and in turn, our "civilised" society is the most remote;
the reminder of the classification is a question of degrees and pieces on this
temporal continuum that relates to a law-like evolution, in time, of the "psychical
unity" of Humanity similar to that of the individual evolution from childhood
to maturity. Subsequently, all classical theories of modernization have referred
to it by contrast to its former state; pre-modern, "traditional" or,
maybe "archaic" societies. Francoise Paul-Lévy considers that
even today "it is difficult to accept that primitive societies do not represent
society's original social state. This is because of at least two reasons: on
the one hand, because if we give up to consider them as images of the origin
we do not know anymore what to think of difference or differences between these
societies and our society; on the other hand, because we believe that, due to
this image provided by primitive societies, we can think of our own history.
(Paul-Lévy op. cit.: 311-312). Following this line of thought, we may
speak even about a kind of actual "neo-primitivism", that gives up
the almost ontological presupposition of Humanity's evolution but preferentially
transfers the development to the economic sphere for interpreting differences
between countries in terms of (economic) development and confirms, thus, implicitly
or explicitly, the ideal of "the most developed country" by the existence
of "developing" countries. Discourse on transition is inscribed in
this "neo-primitivism" but it sees it from the other end: if in the
primitivist discourse of the centre I am the ideal of the Other, in the
primitivist discourse of the periphery the ideal of I is the Other. In
this condition, the elaboration of an anthropological critique of the primitivist
ideology of transition is difficult because it lacks a model, on one hand -
Western anthropology of that period, when it has been critical, has had another
hobby-horse - and the message of Western anthropology that reaches us at this
time is one of methodological precaution generated by failure, by the famous
"colonial quilt". Or, in Baskar's words " why should I, poor
Slovenian anthropologist, share your obsessive post-colonial quilt as far as
Slovenia has never had colonies?" (Baskar op. cit.: 120) Nevertheless,
anthropology in Romania cannot become a mature discipline without the consumption
- and, maybe further development - of a sensible critique of (neo) primitivist
ideology and all of its implications.
"A third dimension (...) rethinks the basic assumption and categories of
Western history or modernity in the context of intercultural contrasts and connections.
With this perspective, the scholar does not simply say: Things happened differently
in this valley; or: The way things happened differently in this valley fits
within a global system of economic and political power relations; but: Our understanding
of the way things happened in this valley may challenge our understanding of
the way things happened in other valleys." (Roseberry op. cit.: 845-846)
Lacking a sufficient comparative experience, Romanian anthropological research,
as much as it is, does not look at other "valleys" for re-problematizing
and understanding better what happens in one's own society. Remaining confined
in its own space, it, however, discovers here "valleys" where things
happen somehow differently: individuals, groups and communities, and their particularities,
are often described with subtlety and consideration. Life histories and community
studies belong mainly to this category. Their undeniable value consists in staging
diversity in a context of monolithic unity that, till now has been formed around
the Party and today tends to be around the European Community. There is often
the risk to remain on the level of testimonies, transforming the inventory of
diversity into a kind of interior exoticism. On the other hand, resting, usually,
at the descriptive level, the task to re-think "the basic assumptions and
categories" they operate with is not even taken into consideration, the
analysis are confined, from this point of view, to a pre-reflexive stage.
Apart from this appetite for diversity, anthropology's interest should be oriented,
I think, towards what could be termed as functional difference.
We understand functional as that constitutes the overall form of the anthropological
functional method (and not functionalism): “Functional analysis consists
in treating every social fact from the perspective of its synchronic relations
to other social facts within an assemble that, epistemologically, does not need
to be regarded as completely structured. The notion of 'function' refers only
to the idea of relative inter-dependency of facts. Connections that are observable
in reality are not promoted to the status of determinant relations or functional
laws. Thus, function does not have an explanatory statute in the strict sense,
but in the heuristically sense of the term." (Lenclud 1999: 267)
Difference, in this sense, refers to a functional diversity that makes up a
system, that constitutes a more or less structured assemble, and answers the
question comment peut-on être different?
The question of different from what? appears immediately. The comparative
context evidently imposes itself.
A first comparative instance is constituted by, more or less global, homogenizing
tendencies. Differences exist - if they exist at all - in a lesser degree, as
isolated, discrete units that are constituted as differences by mutual comparison
in a certain type of classification system. In practice, difference does not
longer exist in isolation, but as reaction to more or less levelling forms of
integration and, consequently it can be approached and understood only in the
context of these levelling processes. "'Cultural' difference is no longer
a stable, exotic otherness" - exclaims Clifford (Clifford 1988: 14) and
continues: "The world is increasingly connected, though not unified, economically
and culturally. Local particularity offers no escape from these involvements.
Indeed, modern ethnographic histories are perhaps condemned to oscillate between
metanarratives: one of homogenisation, the other of emergence; one of loss,
the other of invention. (...) Everywhere in the world distinctions are being
destroyed and created." (idem: 17)
The category of analogous heterogenizing tendencies, of similar "distinctions"
"created" everywhere in the world, constitutes a complementary direction
of comparative approach. They are joined together, sometimes, in what Boaventura
de Sousa Santos terms "counter-hegemonic mondialization". At other
times it might be case of a category of contextual, but relatively similar social
strategies, as well as of ones that try to relate to issues of informal economy
and oscillatory migration. Understanding the way informal economy or oscillatory
migration happens "in this valley" depends, more and more, on the
comparative perspective on the modes these phenomena unfolds "in that valley".
This issue of cross-cultural comparison is an old one in anthropology. Immediately
after the world war II, George Murdock and the entire H.R.A.F. institute have
tried to offer a complete and systemic bases for comparison that, usually, have
had the purpose to test hypotheses related to universalism. This interest reborn
during the sixties, and the methodological problem of assuring a common quantitative
database that allows generalizations have been raised more often (Colson 1967).
Today the temptation to test, on the basis of statistical correlations, universal
social constants is more limited and in the present context is out of the question.
For this different type of comparison, the reflection on the proper methodological
conditions is, unfortunately, very fragile.
At this point a comparison to gustian system might clarify some aspects of this
approach. It also has the advantage to place us into an irreversible critical
heritage.
It is known that sociological analysis starts, in Gusti's vision, from the "concrete
observation", in an ethnographical manner, of "social units"
that are given and concrete ("social reality manifest itself in the form
of concrete units", Gusti 1941: 30). The monographic sociology finds its
object of analysis already defined, circumscribed in a "natural" way:
"the delimitation is made in a natural manner following the instructions
offered by reality itself: sociological monograph confines itself to the study
of concrete social units the limiting principle of which relates to their organic,
totalitarian nature" (idem: 27). It is no surprise that the village is
naturally considered to be the elementary social unit of analysis. The second
step is "comparison", that has the purpose to make the transition
from the village communities to the great national community, allowing thus
the achievement of sociology's aim as "science of nation".
The above-mentioned approach follows, in great lines, the same steps, but the
character of "social units" and "comparison" is profoundly
different. Firstly, functional difference, as the social unit of analysis, does
not have the essentialist and spatially delimited character as in the gustian
perspective. When you study, for example, the diffuse household or a village
from Maramures, Oa_ or Vrancea where half of the population is engaged in an
oscillatory migration towards all the corners of Europe, the village can no
longer be a self-sufficient "social unit". It would probably be more
appropriate to speak about (more or less) de-localised social networks. Secondly,
the comparison cannot be made only in the national space, even if the aim remains
the study of one's own society. On the one hand, "concrete observation"
has to follow the diverse paths of these social networks - this could lead the
researcher on unexpected directions. On the other hand, where more or less similar
reactions respond to the same homogenising pressures, comparison to other contexts
becomes almost indispensable to understand the studied "functional difference".
Thus, for example, research on migration from maghreb to France might be as
useful in understanding certain aspects of today's social life in Vrancea as
the intense studies Stahl has dedicated to this area. From this point of view,
for Romanian anthropology "at home” is inevitably to open up and to
be integrated at least to a regional anthropology, allowing a better mastering
of such clarifying comparisons.
A crucial issue has to be addressed: if "functional difference" defines
a type of knowledge that might be considered anthropological, then, where does
this knowledge, that pretends to be specific, comes from or what does produce
it? Since Malinowski, the anthropologist has had a magical method at his disposal,
called participant observation - possible only through anthropological fieldwork.
All the painful transformation of fields done by anthropologists, especially
recently, seriously questions this anthropological myth. "The pretentious
presupposition according to what the (properly trained) anthropologist perceives
things 'as they are in reality' is reproduced in the instruction spaces of anthropology,
the construction of which have rested on the powerful Malinowskian myth of the
field. (Baskar op. cit: 127) It might remain something from this history of
anthropological fieldwork practices. Traditionally, they put the researcher
in front of the Other, whom the anthropologist has tried to decipher as different.
This distancing of the object of study as Other and, therefore as different
seems to be produced in the community of anthropologists, even if this Other
has sometimes become his neighbour or countrymen. His intellectual attitude
seems to be thus one of wonder: common-peut-on etre different? Other researchers
in the social sciences seem to be rather urged by the suspicion of an explanation
concerning a phenomenon "from their world". This relative "alienation"
of the anthropologist situates him in a slightly different temporality of research,
because "wondering" takes time while “suspicion" is impatient
- bad luck for anthropologist, because the beneficiaries of research are, themselves
restless.
One might say that not the field as such, as specific anthropological field,
is the origin of anthropological knowledge, but a certain relation to the field.
Is it possible to learn it in other way than through "anthropological field'?
Anthropology may exert its critical dimension by using the argument of difference
itself in contexts that, in a way or other, neglects or represses this difference.
In Romania, concerned about its own transition, what anthropology, as much as
it is and it may offer, cannot be perceived otherwise than exoticism, being,
eventually, the delight of some refined individuals tired of Real Politic? Then,
what is anthropology at home good for in times of transition? The desired answer
would be the following: for “stepping out of transition”!
What would this formulation mean? Obviously nothing of the kind: “the light
at the end of the tunnel”; anthropology cannot have solutions in that sense.
It is not about bringing “transition” to an end, but about renouncing
to approach social changes of this period exclusively in the “transition
discourse’s” normative parameters.
What then can be reproached to this discourse and the practices (namely research
practices) generated by it? Not so much their, understandable and even necessary
normative nature as their abstract character. I have in mind, primarily the
treatment of social phenomenon as distance on an ideal We-West dimension. This
leads further towards the often-illicit import of issues formulated from the
perspective of these distances. In other words, a social phenomenon becomes
an issue just to measure the distance between the social conditions of the country
and the West from the end of the tunnel. For example, social life in our villages
is categorised in two broad issues: the issue of poverty (that must be eradicated)
and of entrepreneurs (who have to be promoted). Thus, this problems become abstract
to the extent that they are not treated as such, are pulled out of context where
more than half of the rural population, that does not enter neither category,
does not constitute an “issue” for none. However, replaced in their
context, both poverty and entrepreneurs looks differently from the general reference
points of poverty and entrepreneurship, whatever these might be.
Finally, all this leads to the neglect of “concrete” diversity that
needs to be managed by the politics of “transition” that, in turn,
generates it through this management. Than, we may conclude that what is reproachable
in “discourse on transition”, from this point of view, is the levelling
of social reality it refers to, on the one hand, and, complementary, the theoretical
and methodological inadequacy regarding the reality, on the other hand.
What might, then anthropology, in particular, do in relation to these shortcomings?
Regarding “uniformization”/homogenisation it may be, by updating and
re-orienting classical ethnology’s approach, a new form of Défense
et ilustration not of a unique national particularity but of diversity existing
in today’s Romanian society and the relation of these “functional
differences” to the nation-wide social project. Back to field!, than, but
with the issues of our times and not that of the 19th century. The argument
of difference becomes, thus, an element of criticism to the extent that it explicitly
relates to the homogenizing discourse of transition and to normative research
that supports it.
The problem of “inadequacy” is more complex and goes beyond both “transition
discourse” and anthropology. Essentially, is a problem of “the conflict
between language and reality”, as Havel stated: “the principle of
this type of reasoning is the fetishisation of certain dialectical figures and
anchoring them in rigid systems of thought and phraseology patterns. Applying
them to other issues creates, at first, the impression of a perspective on reality
through an outstanding ideological grid, but this mode of thought imperceptible
se departs from reality and, subsequently, it cannot affect it anymore. This
mechanism is primarily realized through a ritualization of language (...)”
(Havel 1995: 10-11). The precious departure of language from reality is the
property of our (elite) discourse on transition too. Anthropology, in this perspective
might play a part not because it “knows” but because it has a position
in which it has to learn, maybe more quickly than others. Concern for “functional
difference” puts anthropology in closer and more systematic connection
to those social contexts where “distinctions are being destroyed and created”,
where what we call, rather metaphorically for now, globalisation – but
also re-territorialization and localization – is produced in everyday life,
where different forms of hybridisation become palpable. The effort in trying
to understand the realities directly confronted by anthropology – namely,
to understand them from a comparative perspective that produces generalizations
– requests to revisit concepts and principles of analysis, ultimately,
to think different of realities that become significantly different. Thus, according
to its progress, anthropology could have a major contribution in changing the
cognitive apparatus of problem raising and interpretation regarding actual social
change, participating thus in re-dimensioning the public discourse itself.
Till now, it has resulted that the critical contribution of anthropology would
be that it contributes, through handling the argument of difference, to a more
correct and differentiated questioning and interpretation of social change,
enforcing, thus renunciation of transition discourse’s homogenizing patterns.
Is it possible to ask for more from a social science? Today, we are inclined
to give a negative answer. Let us remember that social sciences have aimed at
and have had an important normative role throughout modernity (from this point
of view, being in a mercenary relation to a norm they have not contributed to,
are only second-hand normative). Is it not possible to have in mind also a normative
contribution of social science, of anthropology in particular? I do not see,
in principle, any obstacle related to that. Moreover, familiarizing anthropology
with differences might allow it the critical moulding of some of these partial
and ascending but, nevertheless, efficient norms as, perhaps “alternative
movements” or “local strategies” in a world that seeks new solutions.
It is the path taken by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto some decades
ago: “Instead of the general model, the possibility to focus the analysis
on local realities that gives it consistency, is emphasized. That is why we
gain from it. Instead of the difference to the model, the result of the research
is the knowledge of what is particular to the investigated reality. Its (the
study’s m.n.) basic hypothesis is that there is a possibility for real
development in Latin America, which could not be understood referring to usual
great explanation schemes. Through this hypotheses the authors call attention
to the particular sense of approved politics and they try to understand them
starting from their features and does not consider them as deviations from present
great systems of thought.
"The meaning of the study is in difference not in the norm" concludes
Caldeira (idem: 19). However this difference, if critically and deeply analysed,
generated a development model that made the tour of the world. It is true, however,
that none of the two was anthropologist...
All these might be considered, I think, "vocations" of anthropology,
especially of anthropology at home in times of transition. There is only one
condition: anthropology has to give up to be just anthropology or pure anthropology.
Then, the question is: is anthropology or anthropologization the major need?
Only a carefully considered answer to this question allows us to return to Baskar's
question regarding the issue of "institutional foundations" of anthropology
in post-communist societies.