Toward a Modal Anthropology

Abstract This article outlines a modal anthropology, defined as the ethnographic description of what is possible and necessary for actors operating within a given (technical, aesthetic, ecological) medium. Spanning a wide array of examples, from evolutionary biomechanics to socialist jokes to village feuds, it surveys extant work on modality and its disciplinary antecedents, while examining some of the tricky issues involved in shifting across modes in relation to environmental inputs. Comparing the same act within different possible modes or the different possible actions within the same mode provides a powerful comparative technique for anthropological analysis, one that is particularly relevant in an era of planetary counterfactuals.