ACADEMIA Letters

Is anthropology a transformative science?

Dr.Cajetan Coelho, Anthropology, KU Leuven

Abstract
In recent times anthropology has been experiencing severe hiccups. The Covid-19 pandemic
has brought field studies and ethnographic encounters to a standstill. Without genuine face-
to-face encounters or rubbing of shoulders with one’s interlocutors, the study of anthropology
lacks flesh and blood that are so vital to keep anthropology alive and kicking. As a science,
anthropology, claims that authentic transformation of self and society are two essential pillars
that make the discipline relevant. In this paper, I discuss issues that make anthropology so
exciting even in the face of incredible challenges for survival.
Key words: dwelling, world-building, stuckedness, coevalness, leprosy

The vibrant life of human beings, living beings, and non-beings occupy a central place in
anthropology. Tim Ingold is concerned with being alive, dwelling, and making (2000, 2011
& 2013), his perspectives of concern in anthropology. For Heidegger (1975) and for Povinelli
(2011) the focus is dwelling. Jarrett Zigon introduces the idea of world-building (2018). In-
gold’s preference is to be in a world in such a manner that one is never pre-limited within a
pre-assumed totality, but rather possibilities for becoming otherwise remain open. Dwelling
is understood as not simply being able to live one’s everydayness. Zigon (2014a) argues that
merely being in the world becomes something like being trapped in a world. Heidegger’s
conception of dwelling is both building and care that allows for continued poetic dwelling
(1975). Such creative dwelling is being in the world in such a way that as part of that world
one is intimately intertwined with and concerned for it and its constituent parts. Zigon (2014c)

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Dr.Cajetan Coelho, deshbhakt2015@gmail.com

Citation: Coelho, D. (2021). Is anthropology a transformative science? Academia Letters, Article 3094.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3094.

1
offers a radical and dynamic rethinking framework to gauge life’s transformational possibili-
ties. Aided by his ethnographic studies among the HIV/AIDS agonists in Russia (Zigon 2009
& 2013) and through his research among the drug users in Vancouver, St. Petersburg, Den-
pasar, and Copenhagen (Zigon 2011, 2015, 2018), Zigon deploys critical hermeneutics as an
analytical toolkit to study life-worlds that appear stagnant on account of moral breakdowns
(2009b), and hence unworthy for fulfilling life’s moral imperative for a dignified dwelling.
Zigon’s research collaborators display their ethical tactics to create a new moral dispositional
self, through creative experimentation in trying to become otherwise.
Traditional concepts like reason, morality, dignity, rights, autonomy (Rae 2010; Villa
1996) are prior to any actual intertwining with any particular world. So, such concepts are
less helpful in understanding evolving reality. In place of the standard rubrics of behavioral ex-
pectations and evaluations, Stephen White (2000) suggests an alternative ontological starting
point that could lead to alternative political and ethical possibilities. Long-serving standard
morality jargons, Zigon argues were firmly set up in former times by minds of the bygone eras.
Such archival vestiges were in turn adhered to stubbornly as norms of conduct and faithfully
passed on to later generations as compact and non-negotiable straitjacketed moral outfits to
be worn for every situation and context.
A study of the being alive, dwelling, making, and world-building perspective calls for an
empathy-driven attitude towards research collaborators or interlocuters in the designated re-
search field. With such an understanding and arrangement in place, one can observe, listen,
and invite “others” to talk about the way the social context has impacted their lives and how it
has created the current circumstances in which they experience stuckedness (Hage 2009). Crit-
ical hermeneutical analysis is to offer possibilities for thinking, doing, and being morally and
politically otherwise, rather than reproducing the moral vocabulary that no longer resonates
with what it is like to be-in-this-world today. Zigon (2014b) observes that pre-conceived con-
cepts and notions of analysis cannot be applied for understanding the ever-evolving existence,
but rather the concepts must emerge out of the very process of being and becoming finitely.
As a result, an anthropological sensibility demands constant re-conceptualization. Zigon’s
anthropological endeavors suggest that everyone should be treated with dignity and dignity
is not out there, but individuals participate in ‘doing dignity’, generating a sense of integrity
and moral accountability from within the core of their being.
Philosopher Nelson Goodman (1978) in his work on world-making does float the idea
of making, but Ingold as an anthropologist demonstrates how one makes in the given envi-
ronment, collaborating with the forces of nature and culture as equal and valued partners in
the joint enterprise. The study of such processes of human sociality requires an explicit the-
ory of human subjects. The motivations, desires, and ethics that shape innovatory making

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Dr.Cajetan Coelho, deshbhakt2015@gmail.com

Citation: Coelho, D. (2021). Is anthropology a transformative science? Academia Letters, Article 3094.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3094.

2
require careful exploration. Aided by critical hermeneutics, one could try to trace the awak-
ening of moral consciousness (Zigon 2009b) in the subjects of one’s ethnographic field study
endeavors. For an ethically sound research practice, Johannes Fabian introduces the idea of
coevalness as a mandatory attitude in the anthropological endeavor. It is readiness for mutual
respect that needs to exist between the anthropologist and the research partners (Fabian 2014).
With such a frame of thinking to offer me guidance, I proceed to study some leprosy serv-
ing community initiatives in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra in Central India. At this
stage, I tend to call this part of my endeavor, ‘a work in progress’. In the first half of the last
century, a few enlightened minds in the Vidarbha region embracing the ethics of detachment
and the accompanying socio-economic precarity (Haver 1996) decided to plunge into con-
structing a meaningful common dwelling for fellow human beings, forced to spend their lives
as outcasts. Living on the peripheries, the rejected, dejected, and ejected human beings kept
migrating and seeking refuge (Westoby 2009) to spend their remaining days as individuals
or minority groups in exile. Such experiences of disjuncture (Amit 2015) create fractures in
kinship ties and usher in major emotional and socio-economic upheavals. It is on the periph-
eries and interstitial spaces that life gets a remake where emergent socialities attract attention.
I study the initial perestroika activities (Zigon 2011) that ignited the motility of the fledgling
community. With free and open space to operate on, they felt liberated from the language of
persecution they had to endure (Haver 1996) as leprosy patients. Other survivors convinced
of the impending precarity, decided to remain and work away from home (Allison 2013).
When worlds break down, dwelling as of old is no longer possible. When such a des-
perate state is reached, the moral imperative for life is to look for alternative strategies and
tactics that open possibilities for dwelling. This type of dwelling as a concept offers a fresh
starting point for understanding how differences manifest. A link between such starting-point,
ethical motivation, and political practice can offer new avenues for conceptual thinking. To
be human (Arendt 2013) is to be intimately intertwined with a world for which one is con-
cerned, and which is concerned, in turn, for one. An analysis of the conviviality generated in
the experiment by the inter-twining of leprosy survivors among themselves and with a vari-
ety of disabled, able-bodied, and animal co-inhabitants could offer support to the demands of
anthropology as a relevant and transformative science (Latour 2005).

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Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Dr.Cajetan Coelho, deshbhakt2015@gmail.com

Citation: Coelho, D. (2021). Is anthropology a transformative science? Academia Letters, Article 3094.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3094.

3
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Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Dr.Cajetan Coelho, deshbhakt2015@gmail.com

Citation: Coelho, D. (2021). Is anthropology a transformative science? Academia Letters, Article 3094.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3094.

4
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Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Dr.Cajetan Coelho, deshbhakt2015@gmail.com

Citation: Coelho, D. (2021). Is anthropology a transformative science? Academia Letters, Article 3094.
https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3094.