This introduction suggests that anthropology often assumes that the people anthropologists work with are relatively powerless. Due to this default, anthropologists tend to design their research and theorizing to reflect a relatively powerless other. We suggest that the accumulated scholarship on studying up, that is, studying those who structure the lives of many others, offers more accurate ways to theorize power and its exercise as partial and situated, as well as more plural and productive ways to imagine anthropological practice and ethics. We also suggest that this line of thinking gives us some ground to speak to the larger direction of the discipline.

这个介绍表明人类学经常假设人类学家工作的人相对无能为力。由于这种默认，人类学家倾向于设计他们的研究和理论来反映相对无能为力的其他人。我们建议，积累的研究成果，即研究那些构建了许多其他人的生活的人，提供了更准确的方法来理论化权力及其作为局部和情境的行使，以及更多元化和富有成效的方式来想象人类学实践和道德。我们还建议，这种思路为我们提供了一些基础来讨论该学科的更大方向。