S1E1 Dancer or Grasshopper? Anthropologist Jean-Pierre Warnier

Is the anthropologist more like a dancer or grasshopper when in the field? Can the subjectivation or ‘making’ of an anthropologist be reconstructed through their network of encounters? What can those of us who are not social scientists learn about relationships from this inquiry? To discuss this, join our hosts Urmila Mohan and Emma Cieslik as they talk with Jean-Pierre Warnier, a French anthropologist who was invited in the 1970s by the then Fon of Mankon in Cameroon, Africa, to conduct his doctoral research. This was the start of a long relationship with the kingdom and its people. A co-founder of the 'Matière à Penser' group (MaP), Warnier’s bodily-and-material approach to the study of practices, derived in part from his work in Mankon, enhances our understanding of how worlds-in-motion are created. Image: J.-P. Warnier when the Fon of Mankon gave him a palace title. Cameroon, 1974. Courtesy of J.-P. Warnier.