Abstract
This chapter argues for the importance of foregrounding epistomology in the discipline to ensure a viable publicly engaged anthropology. The discussion draws on the author’s experiences with engaged anthropology in three different cases related to Bosnia, highlighting both the ways anthropological insights may challenge prejudice and the dominant definitions of critical issues and the anthropologist’s role as witness anchored in the discipline’s methodology of participant observation. It argues that an effective public anthropology presuppose that the anthropologist is clear about the basis for her knowledge claims, and that the lifeworld she is talking about is recognizable on some level as part of a common humanity. This is achieved through implicit or excplicit comparisons and goes to the heart of the anthropological project.
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Bringa, T. (2016). From the War Zone to the Courtroom: The Anthropologist as Witness. In: Bringa, T., Bendixsen, S. (eds) Engaged Anthropology. Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40484-4_2
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