Anthropology and modernity

Against those who have taken anthropologists to task for flirting with the "meta-narratives" of modernity, this article argues that it is incumbent on them to engage with both modernity and modernist narratives far more direc tly and explicitly than in the past. This holds even, or especially, for th ose who, in positing a notion of multiple modernities, have managed to hold modernist narrative at arm's length, neglecting the potential fruitfulness of juxtaposing Western and non-Western experiences of what Habermas has ca lled the project of modernity. The encounter between anthropology and moder nity is generated on the one hand by changes in the lives of the subjects o f ethnographic research, but the fact of these changes raises more searchin g questions about whether ethnographers ever studied genuinely premodern pe oples and cultures. The reflexive imperative, moreover, confirms the need t o recognize anthropology's own modernist origins. Finally it is argued that it is critical modernist theory in the Hegel-Marx-Weber tradition that is the most pertinent to the ethnographic encounter and that the exercise of b ringing together critical theory and ethnographic knowledge, while conflict ual, produces fruitful results for both sides.