Committed, engaged e applied anthropology

Anthropology has become very popular over the past decades. We have witnessed a proliferation of anthropologists and anthropologies but the theoretical debate and the epistemological reflection of the discipline have come to a full stop. It seems that anthropology has reduced itself to a tekhne among many others, characterizing itself – according to the author – as «Atlantic anthropology», a protocolar anthropology in thrall to the dominating ideologies of the financial markets. The renewed discussion on the concepts of development and cooperation – concepts which have deeply marked the past three decades of social sciences and the current crystallization of anthropology – that is of contemporary economy, represents an opportunity to revivify and deepen the impact of anthropological theory. It is an epistemological and political impact with remarkable social and scientific consequences which is mostly detectable in one of the declinations of anthropology, i.e. applied anthropology, when and if intended as committed anthropology that founds its methodology and its way of being on fieldwork: a continuous dialogue with “alterity” in which the only thinkable “alienity” is represented by the tekhne and by the financial markets which support and promulgate it as omnipresent and almighty verbum. Keywords: applied anthropology, committed anthropology, financial market, alterity, tekhne