John Tresch and Richard Handler, guest editors

Anthropology’s intense concern with its own past stands out among the social sciences. After a quick review of current literature, economists, political scientists, sociologists, and even historians can jump right into their presentation of new findings. But few anthropologists writing about the contemporary world do so without at least an acknowledgement, and often a careful reckoning, of how anthropology’s previous theoretical frames and (geo-) political position continue to shape current anthropological work on the issues at hand.

In-depth study of the histories of anthropology adds detail and complexity to these briefer acknowledgements. Careful, contextual, polyphonic history reveals hidden contradictions and ambiguities; it can highlight the complicities of canonized figures and movements; it might produce an unwanted empathy for actors and developments we were inclined to condemn. Moreover, historical researchers focused on anthropology—or anthropologists focused on history—can often be deliberate and explicit about the ways in which their archival research, oral history, and hermeneutic reconstruction addresses and engages with current concerns.

This Special Focus Section is the result of a series of panels held in the First International Conference of the Histories of Anthropologies, “Doing Histories, Imagining Futures,” hosted online between 4 and 7 December, 2023. This conference—a landmark for history of anthropology, with nearly 100 presentations from scholars around the world—was organized by the history of anthropology network [HOAN].