Jailbreak of the Imagination: Anthropology and the Practice of Abolition

Rooted in the freedom dreams of Black political movements across diasporas, abolition has emerged as a framework for the study and practice of building a world without captivity. Anthropologists of social movements have attended to the dreamers and destroyers doing this work, turning an analytic eye to the practice of abolition among community organizers, high school students, immigrant rights advocates, and queer activists. As the discipline flails for relevance, anthropologists writing from some of the most prestigious enclaves have called for its destruction. Both abolitionist anthropology and the abolition of anthropology itself have surfaced as rejoinders to the deraced humanism that dominated the last century of American anthropology. In this review, we engage abolition as a political horizon, a targeted decarceration movement, an ecological struggle, a mode of healing, and a pedagogical framework. Ultimately, we conceptualize abolition as an ecumenical imperative that both exceeds and inspires anthropological practice.