20th Century Anthropology

The contemporary world is in a constant process of transforming and revising its previous ways of functioning. However, for much of the 20th century, contemporary anthropology was still highly effected by its colonial past. Despite various anthropologists making strides towards improvement of anthropological study, anthropology’s colonialist foundations still disseminated into contemporary work. Yet, in the late 20th century, numerous anthropologists made direct efforts to reject racialized methodologies, and, into 21st century anthropology, entire forms of perception began to considerably shift. According to Stephan Feuchtwang, early British social anthropology sought “knowledge of total systems or structures from small-scale social units …show more content…
Lowe expands a “quasi-species” image into what she calls “multispecies clouds”: “collections of species transforming together in both ordinary and surprising ways” (2010:626). Lowe’s work signifies anthropology’s expansion past human-centered experience; she addresses the relationships between humans, birds, and viruses in order to examine the total narrative of H5N1. As she discusses the movement of birds from “the realm of bios (forms of life with biographies, part of ecological biodiversity)” into “the domain of zoe—that which is killable”, she addresses the interaction between animal and virus, as well as how this categorical movement is orchestrated by human interaction. Lowe’s ethnography examines the multiplicity of existence between all that is biological, which is a stark contrast from the solely human-oriented anthropology of the past. In order to address the relationship between culture and nature, “[a] new genre of writing and mode of research has arrived on the anthropological stage” (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:544). The method of “multispecies ethnography” aims to move peripheral beings such as animals, plants, fungi, and microbes away from a human centered existence into the foreground of anthropological study (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010:544). Kirksey and Helmreich propose that multispecies ethnography focuses on how “a …show more content…
However, with the high degree of interconnectedness that humans experience with other biological and technological beings, the mere “study of human beings” is becoming ill-considered. Anthropology can no longer be seen as such, because it is a study of complex interactions between humans, non-humans, the living, and the non-living. In an age where previously assumed truths are being uninhibitedly questioned, anthropology is working to ensure the same. Through these interdisciplinary approaches, anthropology is able to study the non-hierarchical total phenomena of existence, including both humans and their earthly counterparts. While anthropological study is not remotely close to being idealistic, contemporary study has brought forth a rejection and revision of its colonial history in order to study the amalgamation of influence that generates human and non-human