No such thing as a concept: A radical tradition from Malinowski to Asad and Strathern

Abstract

In light of renewed questions about the relationship between anthropology’s past and future, two radicalizations of the British tradition are particularly worth exploring: those of Talal Asad and Marilyn Strathern, arguably the most widely read anthropologists beyond the discipline, and the most regularly misunderstood. Asad and Strathern are rarely engaged together because the anthropologies that their works have inspired operate quite separately, their mutual implications left unexplored. And yet, tracing the development of Asad’s and Strathern’s respective work reveals a deep resonance, beginning with their training in the concern with translation, which owes more to Malinowski than anthropologists today are generally aware. The paper argues that reading Asad and Strathern together can help mitigate the over-cultivation of the “concept” in recent anthropology, multiply insights into the constitutive relations among anthropology, science and the secular, and refine perspectives on the legacy of British anthropology and on anthropology’s future politics.