Anthropology and Science Fiction

          In “Sail On! Sail On!: Anthropology, Science Fiction and the Enticing Future,” Collins maintains that the anthropology has overemphasized the importance of the past and present while underestimating the importance of studying the future. This kind of tendency can be attributed to anthropology's "tempocentrism," a belief that our own current time represents what is right and we should judge things according to it. So Collins argues that we should pay more critical attention to future possibilities through anthropological science fiction. 
          Apparently it seems that I have been immersed in tempocentrism as well until I read this article. I have never been able to associate anthropology with studying future. I don't exactly know why, but I guess I unconsciously thought that studying future cannot be a "study," since it will be largely based on our imagination, which is not supported by factual information or solid evidences.
          While it is understandable that anthropology has problems in its myopic approach to studying humans, as it has only looked at past and present, I think it is ironic that anthropology has a problem of "tempocentrism." So far, from the anthropology courses I have taken, I have learned that we study anthropology because we should not be trapped in the cultural bias. We study anthropology so that we can better understand various human cultures, human behaviors, you name it, whatever once seems weird. So I thought that anthropology rejects anything that is '-centrism,' including tempocentrism and ethnocentrism, but then anthropology has problems in leaning towards tempocentrism and ethnocentrism, so it is pretty interesting. 
          Although the author talks about the relationship between anthropology and science fiction as something relatively new, I think anthropology has always been very closely related to science fiction, since they both deal with "others" regardless of time frame. Maybe there can be difference between imaginative representations of others and ethnographic representations of them, so I think it might be interesting to compare how the same "others" are viewed differently in anthropology and science fiction.