Post-Conventional Anthropology, Praxis, and Value

Beginning as a comparative science, interested in myriad aspects of human experience, anthropology has in recent decades become the subject of intense political praxis, examined for its complicity in projects of power. These and other such provocations have cluttered my own relationship with the discipline for several years. So too has a fatigue traced to the evidenced dismissal of anthropology’s legitimacy in academic spaces; specifically, institutions of higher education. On balance, it would seem we need to reconsider where the discipline is headed and the conventions of anthropology as practice. Through a discussion of convention and its limits, this paper articulates optimism around a post-conventional anthropology. There are five tenets to a post-conventional anthropology: praxis, ethics, diplomacy, reflexivity, and creativity. These are not new for anthropologists yet identifying their specificity and constitutive parts, as reworked for an expanding field of practice in anthropology, as well as how they combine to become the entire infrastructure of anthropological practice across a broad field of situational contexts is crucial to thinking more flexibly about how they shape our working lives in new ways. Post-conventionality is presented as a practical rewiring that acknowledges inherited foundations while reorienting the discipline toward emergent social, workforce, legal, ethical, and economic conditions. By clarifying the limits of convention and specifying what counts as post-conventional practice, the paper argues for renewed optimism about anthropology’s relevance.