The Past, Present and Future

            In “Sail On! Sail On!: Anthropology, Science Fiction and the Enticing Future,” Samuel Collins addresses the critique that anthropologists are “tempocentric,” or are only concerned with “the past, the ethnographic present and the actual present” (180). Collins also talks about the relationship between anthropology and science fiction, saying that they are more closely related now than they have ever been. As a result, Collins argues that anthropologists have no choice but to “embrace the future.” Using technologies of future works, this seems like a reasonable goal.

            The most interesting section of this article is the one entitled “Anthropologists as Bad Writers.” In this section, Collins references an excerpt from story called “Univara,” which is set in a utopian-like American society. The excerpt is a dialogue between two middle school students who are talking about the new welfare system that people have to work for. If they don’t work to earn that “living wage” they are deported to an “undeveloped country” nearby. This story functioned as an example of a story, written by an anthropologist that is too predictable and ethnocentric. Collins then asks the question “Does the existence of these types of stories means that anthropologists are bad science fiction writers?” He doesn’t explicitly answer this question, but he raises an interesting point about how science fiction writers need to have a basic understanding of anthropology to write futuristic fiction, while many anthropologists do not study the “future.” Therefore it is more difficult for anthropologists to predict the way technology will affect every day life in the future.

            I found this section interesting because I had never thought about anthropology in terms of “past, present and future” before. Most of the work we have done so far has been historical analysis, and looking ahead on the syllabus, it seems like the “technology” section is going to be about the way technology affects present day life. Is it important for anthropologists to think about the future? What is anthropology’s role in predicting or preparing for the future? I will definitely have these questions in mind during class and as I read the readings for the next few weeks.