In an essay in this week's Chronicle, Kendall M. Thu argues that anthropologists are ignoring key issues that should be tackled by their discipline. Mr. Thu, an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Iowa, talks about the potentially valuable role his discipline could play through the study of food, food systems, and the role of food distribution in nations' political economies. But instead of examining such issues, most cultural anthropologists "have been pursuing trendy issues of postmodernism, blurred genres and identities, hermeneutic interpretation, voices of hegemony, and reflexivity," Mr. Thu writes. As a result, he says, the field has become "increasingly irrelevant to contemporary policy and politics." Is Mr. Thu's critique of anthropology correct? Have anthropologists abandoned the roots of their discipline to focus on trendy postmodern issues? What should anthropologists be studying? (Mr. Thu will be joining the Colloquy periodically to answer questions or reply to points made about his essay.) For further information, see this background story:
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