Should we expect the social sciences in general, and anthropology in particular, to enlighten us about society’s problems and how they might be solved? According to Philippe Descola, it is rather by requiring us to consider the multiplicity of ways of being that the social sciences can help change the world.
Westerners think they own a universal democratic model. However, their confidence vanishes whenever they try to export it. Worse, this claim hampers their examination of both their own eventful history and the questions raised by non-Western democratic experiences.
