“Sense and Sensibility”: on the Sensibilities of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Abstract

The article serves as an introduction to this special issue devoted to “new anthropological sensibilities.” The question of sensibility is examined in the context of the development of social and cultural anthropology and its influence on related disciplines. It is presented as a founding myth of anthropology whose impact lies in the continuous reorientation of anthropological inquiry to what is excluded and marginal, including within the research and interpretative process itself. The text introduces the eight articles that address the theme of this special issue, concerning issues of empathy, ethics, care, everyday life, materiality, affect, situatedness and ambivalence in anthropological inquiry. Taken together, they suggest that the directions of the new sensibilities in anthropology are determined by a relational understanding of otherness and an openness to processes of differentiation.