Anthropology has always engaged with the world. Engagement is fundamental to participant observation, the method of knowledge generation synonymous with the discipline. In simple terms, engagement means ‘to meet or be present’, necessitating the ‘involvement’ and ‘commitment’ on which ethnographic texts are built. Across the history of the discipline, views on what it means to be engaged have varied considerably, and have included calls for anthropology and anthropologists to consider their engagement as an active positioning in the world, or for social change. This discussion outlines those different modes of active anthropological engagement, and presents why engagement should be open to debate if the discipline is to remain both relevant in the world and true to its philosophical principles.