Present is good enough

I am a life-long sci-fi lover.  As a kid, I mostly loved the idea of commanding the force as a Jedi (starwars) or the notion of Wizards who have power over things by knowing their names (e.g. le guin’s earthsea series).  As an Adult, I appreciate more and more the way that authors use science fiction to make commentary on society and push the boundaries of how we think about ourselves and others (For example, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game; Frank Herbert’s Dune). Anthropology can also push boundaries of how we think about ourselves and others, which is why I don’t think it is a coincidence that many anthropologists are also lovers (and sometimes writers) of SF, and a number of SF writers dabble in anthropology. 

Collins describes the corpus of SF literature as a “collective image factory, swapping cultural gestalts with corporations and politicians around an axis mundi of advanced capitalism” (p181).  I think this is true in the sense that SF writers are engaging the future to reflect back and comment on the culture that we live in now.  In this way, the so-called future is just an alternate version of the present, with cooler gadgets.

Anthropology of the Future?

This section, though composed of somewhat amusing attempts to address the future in anthropology, brings up the important issue of visioning in anthropology:  making recommendations for change.  Are we just to take copious descriptions and look at things in new ways, or are there recommendations to be made based on our research?

Taking, for example, Margaret Mead’s ideas about “cultural building”… granted they may be a little far-fetched as far as building new cultures in space colonies, but there is a seed of a good notion when we think about what’s the use of all of the knowledge and critique we provide in anthropology? What about the creation that becomes possible with more knowledge?  I think that greater awareness lends itself to greater responsibility for our choices—makes it apparent that we have choice--and with awareness-backed decisions, we are living and re-creating culture with greater authorship.

Collins discusses the crisis of complexity following the unraveling of clean functionalistic explanations as reason for the collapse of these fantastical utopian ideations.  Nonetheless, the complexity through which we understand culture today can’t excuse us from asking big questions like how do we want the future to be?

But to what extent does culture change on the basis of how we want the future to be, versus what we expect it will be?    I enjoyed the flip of the role of the future that Collins describes in the words of Geertz, that “anthropology is suspended in teleologies we ourselves have spun.  Our versions of life now are inescapably inflected by how we think life is going to be” (p190).

So, I believe that if the future is written in the present, then anthropology is where it needs to be.