Towards an Inclusive Anthropology of Aging
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/LSE.2020.59.14Keywords
exclusion, radical difference, ethnography, aging, Poland, USAbstract
Given anthropology’s disciplinary commitment to diversity and openness, studying cultural formations that are based on exclusion and discrimination can pose epistemological
challenges. Such issues are at the heart of longstanding disciplinary debates about cultural and moral relativism, incommensurability, and multiple forms of rationality. This
essay explores how these issues have emerged during long-term ethnographic research on aging in Poland and the US, and suggests that beginning from a place of radical difference
might offer possibilities for a more inclusive anthropology.
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