Thank You!

Dear Readers,

Over the years, some of us (the past and present members of the collective that runs this blog) have been fortunate enough to meet some of you. We say fortunate, because such encounters have always been positive. Many of you have a background in anthropology, having studied it in college, or even a graduate degree, but — as is the case with most people who study anthropology — few of you end up as professional anthropologists. Yet you love the discipline and want to stay connected to it in some way, and so you found your way here. It makes a lot of sense to us that you discovered our blog for such reasons, because most of us did as well. These pathways are meaningful and intentional, and that intention is important to hold on to in times like these.

Anthropologists yearn to be connected to each other, but that connection often eludes us. It eludes us because we might spend more time doing fieldwork and teaching than with other anthropologists. It eludes us because the discipline has become so large that no one can really claim to speak for the discipline as a whole. It eludes us because we lack the infrastructure necessary to truly create a sense of community beyond our specific sub-disciplines or areas of specialization. But, most of all, it eludes us because of inequality. Inequality between Anglo-American Anthropology and the rest of the world. Inequality between the few with tenure track positions and the rest whose careers are permanently precarious. And also because of the many inequalities reproduced in our own institutions — inequalities which are based on the very hierarchies we (as a discipline) decry in our writings: those of class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, and so on. If you speak to any anthropologist for more than a few minutes you will not be surprised to find that they, too, feel somewhat alienated from the discipline.

As a blog, we never thought we could fix these problems, but as each member of our collective sought to overcome their own individual sense of estrangement from the wider discipline; we found comfort and connection together. So we know how much this site has meant to you over the years, because it has meant all of that, and more, to us as well. We want to thank each of you for having been a part of that, for walking/reading/thinking alongside us as we navigated through the world. We hope that we’ll see you on other platforms as we work together to forge new spaces to try making sense of this world together. In her book on organizing for social transformation and liberation, abolitionist Mariame Kaba says, “hope is a discipline.” This blog may be closing up shop, but we plan to keep that practice of centering hope with us wherever we go, and invite you to join us as we move forward, together.

We wish you all well, and end this post with immense gratitude for each other and for all of you.

Sincerely,

The anthro{dendum} collective