The two faces of mutuality: contemporary themes in anthropology

The theme of mutuality has lately emerged in anthropology by the hand of

two of our most influential contemporary thinkers. Yet they explore it in

apparently unrelated guises: by the hand of Johannes Fabian, mutuality

emerges as a methodological preoccupation in discussions about fieldwork

ethics referring to the way in which anthropologist and informant are

engaged in processes of co-responsibility (2001, 2007); by the hand of

Marshall Sahlins, mutuality is a constitutive principle in personal ontogeny

that allows for a theoretical re-founding of kinship studies (2011).