Introduction

Abstract This introduction puts forward capture as an anthropological analytic. Idioms of capture already pervade anthropological descriptions, analyses, and methods. We start by questioning the widespread equivalence between capture and predation, showing that neither of these terms should be read as rifts in sociality but rather as continuations of the social by other means. The significance of the diverse socialities of capture is clarified in relation to previous works that demonstrate how capture folds over and into itself, entrapping not just the prey, but also the captors. By bringing this idea to bear on ethnographic analyses of capture, we argue that capture is frequently deployed as a generic term—a catch word—that simultaneously defines the work of the generic itself as a mode of capture or containment. Lastly, what sets capture apart from notions such as network or entanglement is its recursive potential as a verb and metonym for ethnographic inquiry and representation.