Mobile Humanity: The Delocalization of Anthropological Research

Anthropological research in recent decades has become increasingly multi-sited, envisioning the local as an iteration of world-systemic processes, and following the movement of people, things and ideas across the typical boundaries of sites. This review essay examines four edited volumes concerned with such mobility and dislocation. The cultural anthropological volumes engage with the strengths and perceived weaknesses of multi-sited ethnography, the advantages of following people and themes across space, and the definition of sites by topic rather than by place. The archaeological collections move beyond typologies that have constrained archaeological investigations of movement through the study of the material practices that constituted social landscapes of mobile and settled peoples. Although the reviewed volumes offer important methodological distinctions and theoretical engagements, all four provide numerous ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological views of the delocalization of anthropological research, including claims for the utility of collaborative partnerships, the following of paths across space and time, and the reconsideration of the fixity and centrality of contemporary, historic and prehistoric places.