On the Absence of the Political in Four-Field Anthropology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5232844 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Irfan Ahmad (0000-0002-3780-0509, Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 59 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2018-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Anthropology News (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1541-6151 • E-ISSN: 1556-3502 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/an.804 |
| OpenAlex | W2900252242 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
The absence of politics as a subfield in four-field anthropology—physical/biological, archaeological,linguistic, and cultural-social—has often puzzled me. I first encountered the exact term “four-fieldanthropology” during my doctoral training at University of Amsterdam. If these subfields are whatmake anthropology a holistic discipline, how can politics be excluded? The absence of politics as asubfield unto itself actually does something quite insidious: it divides the world into them and us,where “they”are “primitive,” “pre-modern” peoples studied by anthropology, and “we” are “modern”Westerners, studied by sociology and other disciplines. The division was instituted through “holism,”and it is still an idea at anthropology’s core
Citation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Mathematics · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |