What do we do when we do anthropology? Ethnography? An almost reflexive answer in today’s time. This growing conflation between ethnography and anthropology—with one often substituting for the other—concerned anthropologist Tim Ingold, who voiced a sharp, timely, and provocative critique in an article titled “That’s enough about ethnography” (Ingold, 2014), elaborated further in other works (see Ingold, 2008 & 2017). The book Anthropology and Ethnography are Not Equivalent: Reorienting Anthropology for the Future, edited by Irfan Ahmed and published by Berghahn Books in 2024, brings forth reflections from six anthropologists who each extend Ingold’s questions on the relationship between ethnography and anthropology. These reflections delve into issues that are not only disciplinary but also ethical, social, political, and existential, offering insights into multiple possible reorientations and potential future trajectories for anthropological engagement.

Ingold contends that the conflation of ethnography with anthropology reduces the latter to a mere collection of observational data, overlooking its broader theoretical and relational dimensions. He contrasts ethnography and anthropology by defining ethnography as the practice of describing the lives of others, while anthropology is a deeper engagement—a way of thinking and being with and. Ethnography involves observation and description, but anthropology, according to Ingold, demands an ontological commitment to inhabit these experiences alongside others. For participant observation, this means shifting from description to co-respondence, attentively attending to people and things, where understanding grows through reciprocal involvement in the flow of life. He emphasizes that knowledge is achieved through attunement and mutual responsiveness, rather than detached observation. Participant observation thus entails an ontological commitment that transforms anthropology into a form of education, where understanding is co-created through correspondence and mutual responsiveness. Anthropologists, alongside people, learn and join together in the inquiry into the conditions and possibilities of life.

In the introduction, editor and contributor Irfan Ahmed does an excellent job of tracing the origins of this debate and weaving together various perspectives that engage with Ingold’s contributions, taking them, as Ahmed puts it, in both “underthought and unthought” directions. In Chapter 1, Hitsuki Aishima finds a clue to the crisis of representation in the anthropology of Islam as a way to move away from the knowledge-power syndrome in Ingold’s redefinition of participant observation. Drawing upon Talal Asad’s approach to studying Islam as a discursive tradition, she emphasizes studying with Muslims rather than relying on frameworks laid by orientalist beliefs. Aishima’s courage in bringing forth her dilemmas—dealing with the contradictions between academic understandings of Islam and her students in Manchester, who at times disagreed with her findings based on her research with Muslims in Cairo—expands the scope of epistemological inquiry. This leads to contradictions between academic knowledge and everyday life and makes for a thoughtful read.

Arpita Roy takes us to Geneva’s CERN particle accelerator amidst particle physicists probing the conditions of scientific discovery. She devises methods of Socratic inquiry, stressing the importance of impersonal and logical relations in communicating and arriving at anthropological knowledge through an interplay of ideas and arguments rooted in language, thought, and truth. She shows how the physicists’ ontological commitment to binaries leads to deterministic separation, limiting what is possible. To bridge the spatial and temporal distinctions between participant observation and the institutional and professional imperatives of anthropology, Chapter 3 addresses the temporal distortion between research and writing, often obscured by ethnography. It proposes a counter-ethnographic practice of “textured historicity,” or “constellation writing,” advocating that anthropologists write in the present tense, treating each moment as “past-future” and “future-past.”

In the following chapters, the authors continue exploring these questions in the shadow of Dark Anthropology (see Chapter 4) and the institutional constraints affecting anthropology’s capability for correspondence and ontological commitment amidst the pressures of publish-or-perish, neoliberal assaults on universities, and education. Irfan Ahmed, in his contribution, asks who constitutes the category of “people” anthropologists are supposed to study with. Drawing upon his research on terrorism and Hindutva nationalism, Ahmed argues that this category of “people” is shaped by political dynamics and contestations in international relations, urging anthropologists to consider power relations that extend beyond local contexts. The book concludes with an afterword by Tim Ingold, who comments on each chapter and addresses certain misunderstandings of the contributors—a fascinating addition that underscores the editor’s openness and commitment to advancing dialogue on the future potential of anthropology and its place in the world.

Anthropology and Ethnography are Not Equivalent is an essential read for scholars, students, and practitioners in anthropology and related fields. By deconstructing the assumption that ethnography and anthropology are synonymous, the book opens new possibilities for anthropological engagement and reflection on the human condition. Ahmed and his contributors invite readers to reconsider anthropology’s methods, purposes, and potential, crafting a vision for the discipline that is as engaged as it is responsive.

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Adarsh Shahi has completed an MA in Society and Culture from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar.