Dr. Mark Schuller, Associate Professor, Northern Illinois University, "Anthropological Imagination"

ANTHROPOLOGY COLLOQUIUM SERIES

 
Dr. Mark Schuller

Associate Professor of Anthropology and NGO Leadership and Development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti

'Anthropological Imagination'

Thursday, February 16th, 2017, at 12:00pm in the Anthropology Lounge, 3106 WWPH

If there was ever a time when anthropology was needed, now is it. The specific struggles in the past few years – made all more urgent in the new administration – such as climate change, the global refugee crisis, immigration rights, and Black Lives Matter, demand more than relativism as a moral/ political imperative – even as recent political discourse forces us to return to the so-called “culture wars.” Each are about humanity, the Anthropos. What does it mean to be human? Whose lives matter? And as humans, will we survive our own shortsightedness? To fully engage requires an anthropological imagination, articulating the specificities of how these global, species-level phenomena are lived and confronted by people and communities, as well as a radical empathy, anthropology’s most enduring and urgent legacy.