The literary image of anthropologists

Strangely, anthropologists have ignored popular accounts of themselves. Yet anthropologists are the most popularized academics in fiction. They are portrayed as either heroic or (much more common) pathetic. Fieldwork marks them out as distinctive and makes ordinary anthropologists odd and the already odd ones even odder. Writers of fiction exploit these characters to enable geographical shifts, debate cultural relativity, poke fun at the discipline, discuss anthropological ideas, and detect crimes. Usually, these images of anthropologists are Anglocentric, fundamentally atemporal, gender-blind, and apolitical. Since a good number of these authors are anthropologists themselves, they suggest that some of our colleagues have a frivolous attitude to the discipline. Studying these popular works, which may be regarded as forms of applied anthropology, helps to dislodge the hegemony of its academic version. They remind us that anthropology is not singular, but plural, and that only a section of its history is decided within the cloisters of academe.