What is the question at hand?  Does a focus on mobilities reflect a paradigm shift for anthropology?  So the question isn’t really about how we look at mobilities, but whether our focus on it is representative of a new path along the road of anthropological pursuit.  Well, as good a place as any to begin would be to try and understand what constitutes a paradigm shift.  Certainly, from some of the articles I’ve been reading, mobilities have been discussed in a similar “modern” context since the 1970’s (that I know of).  I wish I new a better history of the study of mobilities within the field of the social sciences… I do perceive there to be a sort of increased depth with which social scientists are looking at mobility.  The idea of mobility, immobility, and the nature between the two has been heavily theorized as of recent.  Does this mean that anthropology is heading in a new direction?  I think it’s bold to say that an increased awareness of a specific topic can completely cause an entire field of academic study to shift, but then I must think back to what have caused the other major shifts in anthropological study.  Jumping over to archaeology, which is distinguished by its multiple, easily identifiable shifts throughout its young life in academia, changes in theory and perspective mainly come from the desire of the next generation to speak out against their predecessors for the sake of betterment (in their mind’s eye) of the field as a whole.  So would this be analogous to a focus on mobility being some sort of generational quest to understand and identify that which was out of reach to their college professors and the founders of the field?  To understand how mobility may or may not be an indicator of a paradigm shift in the study of anthropology, I think it is crucial to understand the modern understanding and theory behind mobility itself.  Mobility, of course, has come to mean much more than the simple notion of “movement”, or at least, movement as we had previously and traditionally conceptualized it.  Mobility is the movement of people, of materials, of ideas, of technologies.  Then mobility, arguably, could be anything, which means it could be nothing at all.  Or, mobility could be looked at as a relationship between entities as opposed to a process that an entity undergoes or achieves.  I think the very topic of mobility in anthropology is tied in which the concept of globalization, which is probably one of the hottest words in the study more recently.  Is it our increasing awareness of the melding and connecting of our world’s cultures that is making anthropologists focus to specifically on mobility, the very vehicle of globalization?  And most importantly, to round it back to the initial question, does this focus on the increasing connectivity of our world represent a new type of anthropology?  I would like to think it does.  Anthropology and archaeology of the past seem to be so fixated on fixed locations, times, and groups of people.  As we become increasingly aware of how cultures and people are branching out and connecting with each other, a direct result of the increases in the span of mobility, we are becoming more aware of how rapidly culture could, and is, changing.  As opposed to looking as cultures as distinct and defined objects, we see them as changing and evolving, many right before our eyes.  Has this created a sense of urgency to not only study culture and cultural change with additional fervor, but to study to vehicle by which culture is changed?  Perhaps.  Whatever the reason may be,  it appears as though the focus on mobility may indeed be representative of a paradigm shift in the study of anthropology.  Crazy stuff.

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Thus ends my free write for now.  I’ll pick up with this all more tomorrow, when I’ve gotten some proper sleep. Cheerio!