Contextualization is among the least examined of anthropology’s methodological virtues, a term whose invocation typically closes an argument rather than opening one. This paper traces the concept’s passage between philosophy and anthropology through three particular mutations: context as logical form, context as variable but morphologically constant language, and context as unbounded and antiformalist form of life. Setting that sequence alongside anthropology’s own accounts of its conceptual development, the paper considers what follows from recognising that in this way contemporary anthropological contextualization, too, has its own context.
Professor Paolo Heywood studied social anthropology at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he received his MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees (2010, 2011, 2015). After my PhD Professor Heywood was a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge (2014-2016), and then appointed to a Junior Research Fellowship at Homerton College, Cambridge, and as an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge (2016-2020). Professor Heywood moved to Durham as an Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology in 2020.
Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs. In-person. Non-CUID holders require advance registration for campus access. Please contact Jeanne Roche at [email protected].
