Paper short abstract:

The paper seeks to explore the possibilities WCAA can offer in terms of strengthening regional anthropologies to ensure critical engagement among the community of scholars from different parts of the globe in their march towards world anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

WCAA rests on the principle of coming together of professional associations on the basis of national anthropologies and marching ahead towards a global and cosmopolitan anthropological engagement .This paper critically examines the new articulations these national anthropologies have not only with the emerging world order but also among themselves. Many of the nations do not have adequate presence of the discipline in their territory while others have articulated their national interests beyond the territorial boundaries of the nation state.

It is interesting to see how WCAA is providing enabling spaces for such tendencies which often get crystallized around a region chequered with the principle of ethnicity, language and nationalism. The paper attempts to explore the possibilities WCAA can offer in terms of creating

democratic and emancipatory spaces for national and regional anthropologies with special reference to south Asia.