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This essay reviews work produced in predominantly US cultural anthropology publications throughout 2017. It asks: What makes an anthropological inquiry timely, what sorts of relationalities command anthropological attention, and to what end? Noting our ongoing methodological commitment to long-term ethnography alongside increasingly important online forums for reaching broader publics and responding quickly to emerging issues, it expands the range of work surveyed to include some online-only short essays alongside the larger collection of traditionally published research articles. Characterized by empathic inquiry, frequently drawing on years of ethnographic and personal experience with the places, people, and other entities that we write about, and often attentive to histories at multiple scales, cultural anthropology of this moment, however published, grapples with dark times while it also offers ways of imagining other, better futures and ways of being in relation to others. Two thematic clusters organize this essay: the first considers temporality alongside mobility and sovereignty, and the second considers relationality alongside subjectivity and mediation. Together, all of these concerns--that are both of the moment and long standing--build a varied body of work that grapples with the interrelationalities that constitute power, place, and possibility. I argue that what makes an anthropological inquiry timely is the extent to which it is relationally informed and attuned to care for worlds that we inhabit and imagine, together. [year in review, sociocultural anthropology, temporality, mobility, sovereignty, relationality, subjectivity,mediation]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the developments in German-language anthropology since the 1970s. The authors argue that the history of German-language social and cultural anthropology is a slow catch-up process. It looks at the institutional development of German anthropology and discusses the role of the Internet in the transmission of anthropological knowledge. Also discussed is the important contribution of the German language Völkerkund to the international history of anthropology.

The article discusses the contemporary anthropology of Ireland with special attention to the Irish culture, traditions, and society. Other topics mentioned in this article include the ethnology of Ireland, the cultural history of Ireland, and the overall history of Ireland with special focus on anthropological research.

ABSTRACT In this review essay, I explore the relationship between cultures of circulation and anthropological facts. Research published in 2013 advanced the field by attending to the coproduction of globally circulating things (commodities, race, brands, authenticity, blood) and specific cultural landscapes. Building on the field's renewed interest in materiality, scholars showed how anthropological facts are produced at the intersection of interlocking cultural classification systems and a world that is heterogeneous and dynamic. Moving beyond the notion that shared meanings and categories are attached to or layered on people and things, this approach conceptualized such relations recursively. Scholars suggested that race-as an anthropological fact-becomes biological through social practice and, similarly, that cultural assumptions and political biases become environmental because they are embedded in our infrastructures and built landscapes. This approach permeates many of the articles reviewed and links the clusters into which I have grouped them: 'Value and Incommensurability,' 'Brands and Authenticity,' 'Race and Blood,' and 'Infrastructure and Citizenship.' I conclude by discussing the challenges and opportunities for a sociocultural anthropology that recognizes the transformative power of global connection while refusing to give up its long-running pursuit of cultural wisdom and more humane social configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the anthropological work in universities and research institutions in India. The authors discuss how Indian anthropologists have been impacted by the country's colonial past, examine the relationship between social anthropology and sociology within Indian intellectual traditions, and explore how democratic processes have impacted India's borderlands.

The 'End of Anthropology' has been predicted many times and for many different reasons-among them, its disappearing object of study, its political imbrication in colonialism, the loss of its distinctive concepts, and the effects of globalization in diffusing its received subject matter. And yet, both institutionally and discursively, the discipline is very much alive, producing new species of knowledge, new theoretical discourses, new empirical interests, new arguments. How, in light of this, do we read the history of its present? By what means is its 'end' to be avoided, its future(s) assured? Where should it go from here, empirically, methodologically, theoretically? One answer lies in a new indiscipline, a discourse that, in dialectic tension with the contemporary world in which it is embedded, redefines the scale, the conceptual foundations, and the techniques of knowledge production of anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, Claude Lévi-Strauss died at the age of 100. In this article, I draw on frameworks that were central to his work to structure my discussion of the key themes in cultural anthropology publications over the past year. The four subjects I consider in this review are kinship, taxonomy, bricolage, and traveling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The breadth and reach of practicing anthropologists in 2009 suggests that anthropology has entered a new phase of advanced engagement at local, national, and international levels. In this article, I review thematic areas in which practicing anthropologists made significant contributions in 2009, including fiscal crisis and business anthropology; U.S. race relations, civil rights, and policy reforms; human rights, environmental change, and displacement; global health and human rights; and war and peace. New areas of expansion are also discussed in the arenas of public archaeology, museums and heritage, and engaged scholarship. Innovations in anthropological research and communicating ethnographic findings with the broader public are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the concept of the anthropological unconscious as a parallel to the notion of the optical unconscious. Transformation of the anthropological unconscious with implications for ethnographic practice; Global relations; Analysis of practices that are optically uncomfortable.

The article offers the author's opinion on Thomas Bierschenk, Matthias Krings, and Carola Lentz's description of German-language anthropology. It discusses the use of the Bologna system in the teaching of social anthropology in European universities. Also discussed is the impact of disciplinary histories and recent policies on the interrelationship of the two fields.

The article offers the author's comments on the essay "World Anthropology with an Accent: The Discipline in Germany since the 1970s" by Thomas Bierschenk, Matthias Krings, and Carola Lentz. The author says that the essay offers a detailed and thorough review of anthropological developments and the epistemic practices and institutions of the anthropological research community in Germany. He also reflects on his own experiences as a short participant observer in the country in 2008-2010.

The author discusses the anthropology of Ireland with special attention to anthropological researchers Keith Egan as well as Fiona Murphy. Other topics mentioned in this article include anthropological research in the 20th and 21st century, the ethnography of Ireland, as well as the history of Ireland.