Aftermaths and recuperations in anthropology (The 2016 Sir James George Frazer Memorial Lecture)

Abstract

The Frazer Lecture was launched in 1921, with the support of scholars from all over Europe, explicitly in the context of the “meeting on common ground” after World War I. In the spirit of anthropologists examining postdisaster processes of any kind, to meet with scholars from other disciplines for mutual illumination, and to revisit its own rich intellectual and empirical archive, my lecture explored processes of recuperation. Recuperation is selective of elements rather than rescuing whole systems, then followed by creative reconfiguration. Sources from classics, recent philosophically inspired anthropology, new ethnography of Africa, and postwar Vietnam are examined as examples that pick up the spirit of the Frazer Lecture itself.