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Does anthropology matter to law? As phrased, this provocation, worthy
of address though it certainly is, may ultimately be unanswerable.
The reason? Because, like all questions of this sort, it harbours others
within it. Precisely which 'anthropology'? 'Law' as what? As everyday
practice, as theorised praxis, as pedagogy, as politics by other means?
What, moreover, counts as mattering? And from where, in particular,
is the provocation being posed? All these questions, patently, make
a difference.

In the wake of the economic "meltdown" of 2008, there arose considerable public debate across the planet over the fates and futures of neoliberalism. Had it reached its "natural" end? What, historically, was likely to become of "it"? How might the crisis in the Euro-American economies of the period transform the relationship between economy and the state? This article addresses these questions. It argues against treating neoliberalism as a common noun, a fully formed, self-sustaining ideological project and makes the case that its adjectival and adverbial capillaries alive, well, and, if in complicated ways, central to the unfolding history of contemporary capitalism. Finally, the article offers a reflection on the ways in which twenty-first-century states have become integral to the workings of finance capital, with important consequences for the conception of political economy.

ABSTRACT  The "End of Anthropology" has been predicted many times and for many different reasons—among them, its disappearing object of study, its political imbrication in colonialism, the loss of its distinctive concepts, and the effects of globalization in diffusing its received subject matter. And yet, both institutionally and discursively, the discipline is very much alive, producing new species of knowledge, new theoretical discourses, new empirical interests, new arguments. How, in light of this, do we read the history of its present? By what means is its "end" to be avoided, its future(s) assured? Where should it go from here, empirically, methodologically, theoretically? One answer lies in a new indiscipline, a discourse that, in dialectic tension with the contemporary world in which it is embedded, redefines the scale, the conceptual foundations, and the techniques of knowledge production of anthropology.

Biographical note: Jean und John L. Comaroff lehrten von 1978 bis zum Sommer 2012 Anthropologie an der University of Chicago. Im Herbst wechseln sie an die Harvard University auf Professuren für African und African American Studies sowie Anthropologie, die sie als Oppenheimer Research Fellows innehaben werden. Außerdem sind sie Honorarprofessoren an der University of Cape Town in Südafrika.