Ahmad, Irfan. 2021. “On the Equivalence between Anthropology and Ethnography.” In Irfan Ahmad (ed.) Anthropology and Ethnography Are Not Equivalent: Reorienting Anthropology for the Future. New York: Berghahn: 1–19.
Abstract: This volume—Anthropology and Ethnography Are Not Equivalent— moves beyond a polarising and caricatured reception of Ingold’s intervention as laudatory or antiethnography and instead recognises its fundamental contribution in its generative capability. It takes his multilayered thesis as important in opening up an analytically productive space to fruitfully revisit many of the common notions about and practices in ethnography as well as those in anthropology. At stake here, then, is not whether or not one agrees with Ingold but how an engagement with his writings enables us to examine some of the most entrenched assumptions anthropologists hold, as do practitioners of other disciplines, about their discipline and ethnography. To this end and in consonance with Ingold’s overall objectives, the volume sheds fresh light on the diverse ways in which to renew anthropology’s potential for the future, especially when the discipline is faced with precariousness and challenges in the contemporary neoliberal times, including its decreasing voice and relevance in the public arenas.
