The Year 2013 in Sociocultural Anthropology: Cultures of Circulation and Anthropological Facts

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this review essay, I explore the relationship between cultures of circulation and anthropological facts. Research published in 2013 advanced the field by attending to the coproduction of globally circulating things (commodities, race, brands, authenticity, blood) and specific cultural landscapes. Building on the field's renewed interest in materiality, scholars showed how anthropological facts are produced at the intersection of interlocking cultural classification systems and a world that is heterogeneous and dynamic. Moving beyond the notion that shared meanings and categories are attached to or layered on people and things, this approach conceptualized such relations recursively. Scholars suggested that race—as an anthropological fact—becomes biological through social practice and, similarly, that cultural assumptions and political biases become environmental because they are embedded in our infrastructures and built landscapes. This approach permeates many of the articles reviewed and links the clusters into which I have grouped them: “Value and Incommensurability,” “Brands and Authenticity,” “Race and Blood,” and “Infrastructure and Citizenship.” I conclude by discussing the challenges and opportunities for a sociocultural anthropology that recognizes the transformative power of global connection while refusing to give up its long‐running pursuit of cultural wisdom and more humane social configurations.

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