Preface: An anthropologist of the contemporary

Abstract

This Festschrift presents essays from a symposium organized in honor of Paul Rabinow. Our hope is that, collectively, the essays offer a sense of the evolution and range of the topics and problems Rabinow investigated, and the diverse projects of anthropological inquiry that have been built in conversation with Rabinow and his work. But most importantly, they bring into focus an audacious proposal, formulated over a remarkable career, for an anthropology of the contemporary world.