Special Issue on Public Anthropology
Editor: Carole McGranahan

Introduction: Public Anthropology
by Carole McGranahan

This special issue of India Review is about public anthropology: socially relevant, theoretically informed, and politically engaged ethnographic scholarship. Our editor and twelve contributors explore what happens when we preface anthropology with "public." We argue that if our goal is for anthropology to not be solely an extractive enterprise, but an ethnographic one in the spirit of exchange, then it must be an engaged endeavor. Yet, what is public anthropology and how is it done? Additionally, why is public anthropology worth pursuing now, and why in India? In this issue we explore these questions by trying to capture the energy of current anthropological work in India. We provide here a glimpse into how some archaeologists and cultural anthropologists are practicing and envisioning public anthropology.

Manifesto for a Public Anthropologist: Insights from Fieldwork
by Sita Venkateswar

Drawing on my research in the Andaman Islands, as well as my ongoing work on poverty and grassroots activism, this paper aims to construct a vision for a public anthropology to engender action towards a more radical and substantial conceptualization of democracy.

Poststructuralism, Technoscience, and the Promise of Public Anthropology
by Kim Fortun

This essay describes theoretical developments that have shaped anthropological work over the past twenty years, how these developments have shaped the design of ethnographic projects and how these projects can contribute to progressive change. Using examples from the anthropology of India, the essay shows how ethnographers have become adept at open systems analysis, providing insight on the many forces that animate a given system - whether the system of concern is the global economy, an organization, or an individual subject - and on the many nodes or pressure points where such systems can be pushed in new directions.

Anthropology in Development: Notes from an Ethnographic Perspective
by Sondra L. Hausner

This essay is an exploration of the roles of and responses to anthropology in the field of international development. From the perspective of a practitioner, the author asks how ethnography can best be used in applied projects, and where anthropology diverges from the goals of development. The article suggests that despite structural and institutional obstacles, the recent move to embrace qualitative methodologies might open the way for ethnography to contribute the perspectives of anthropology's informants to the planning of development projects.

Anthropology and Global Health: Reflections of a Scholar-Activist
by Mark Nichter

In this article, I share a personal history that speaks to my ongoing attempts to introduce medical anthropology to local communities and communities of medicine/public health practitioners, build health social science capacity in developing countries, and provide examples of what anthropology has to offer international health. Highlighted are four principals and an eight step model of formative research that guides much of my work as a scholar activist. Anthropology needs to be seen as a field of public engagement and as a valued resource for those developing and assessing public policy, and interventions guided by such policy.

Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka: An Anthropologist Confronts the Real World
by Dennis B. McGilvray

Until the 1980s, the secluded Tamil-speaking region of eastern Sri Lanka was of anthropological interest primarily because of its interspersed Hindu and Muslim communities and a unique matrilineal kinship and household system. Since then, however, the region has become a zone of conflict and ethnic terror between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebels, and more recently it has suffered tragically from the December 2004 tsunami. This essay traces the effects of these changing fieldwork circumstances on the work of one ethnographer who has studied the region for three decades. Like much recent anthropology in Sri Lanka, this long-term ethnographic project seeks useful ways to address "public" issues of civil war and natural catastrophe while still pursuing the academic goals of basic anthropological research.

Accounting for Multiple Desires: Decolonizing Methodologies, Archaeology and the Public Interest
by Uzma Zehra Rizvi

This article illustrates new archaeological practices in India, which incorporate decolonized methodologies that then allow for the emergence of public interest and community based archaeological projects. One such endeavor is the Neem Ka Thana Heritage Tourism Development Project (NKT-DP). Formed as a public interest project, NKT-DP developed within the framework of eco-friendly heritage tourism providing economic development for the local area. This article questions the roles of the researcher, investigates the difference between public and community in relation to civil society, and proposes community based archaeology as a more effective mode of practice than public interest archaeology in rural India.

Public Archaeology in India: Perspectives from Kerala
by V. Selvakumar

Public archaeology is an emerging area of study in India. The state of Kerala in India has shown good progress in certain areas of public archaeology. This paper focuses how the public in the state of Kerala influences the practice of archaeology. It discuses the two important archaeological discoveries, i.e. the sail boat at Kadakkarappally and the early historic site of Pattanam, that made tremendous impact in the archaeology of Kerala, and public perception of archaeology based on a survey conducted among the lay public in central and southern parts of Kerala. It also focuses on the public archaeology scenario in other parts of India.

Anthropology and Environmental Debate: Reflections on Science, Nationalism, and News Reporting
by Kelly D. Alley

Public anthropology finds company with many other movements in and out of academia today that struggle to open up dialogue on national and global issues and democratize decision-making on problems that most affect people's lives. Public anthropology is a popular emphasis in environmental anthropology where researchers examine contentious struggles and debates over key natural resources. In this paper, I highlight the challenges and predicaments I have faced while documenting an environmental problem in India. I condense these challenges into three kinds of engagements that involve the open-sourcing of science, resource nationalism and news reporting. I explain how these anthropological challenges and predicaments intersect with the goals of Indian river activists and experts as they aim to open up dialogue and decision-making on water issues.

The Politics of Being Buddhist in Zangskar: Partition and Today
by Kim Gutschow

The question of how identities intersect with other social and political identities has been a major preoccupation within South Asian studies. This essay explores this broader question within the Zangskar and Ladakh regions of Jammu and Kashmir. In this part of Kashmir, as elsewhere in India, partition was a major turning point for religious and regional identification. This essay considers the relevance of partition narratives to current practices of communal and caste identifications. It also shows the importance of considering marginal or subaltern perspectives in broader explorations of religion and identity today.

English in India: Reflections Based on Fieldwork Among Anglo-Indians in Kolkata
by Robyn Andrews

The idea of illiterate English-speaking Indians would seem, to most other Indians, a contradiction in terms. During fieldwork carried out in Calcutta over a three year period I met some Anglo-Indians who possess this unlikely pair of characteristics. Their situation poses a challenge to some of the conceptions that Indians have about the relationship between fluency in English and literacy. In this article I challenge this 'doxic' notion drawing on case study material. I also look at some underlying problems for Anglo-Indians within the education system and suggest ways in which the situation for Anglo-Indians might be improved.

The Scholar and Her Servants: Further Thoughts on Postcolonialism and Education
by Nita Kumar

This paper considers the subject-positions of the scholar, someone professionally engaged in knowledge production, and that of the largely uneducated informant. The question considered is whether the fancily educated scholar may not contribute something to the necessary education of her less-than-perfectly educated informants? The paper suggests that this sounds unfeasible because of certain problems in our understanding of "colonialism" and "culture", and that these could be resolved particularly by reflecting further on the intersections of these with class and gender.

Taking Blood: Gender, Race, and Imagining Public Anthropology in India
by Piya Chatterjee

This essay explores anthropological knowledge production in colonial and postcolonial Indian anthropology. It examines the ways in which race and gender implicate ethnographic method, state practices and theoretical exegesis within enduring colonial, and colonizing, logics. It suggests that a public anthropology of India has to first put under scrutiny these underlying discourses of theory, rule and method if practioners are interested in co-eval epistemological projects and study.