Contested Histories and the Future of Anthropology
Roundtable | Anthropology Day 2019 |
How do we position ourselves in a scientific field that has been founded in and has been complicit in colonial enterprise? How do these past allegiances and their legacies put the core of the discipline into question? Since Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986), we have strived for emancipation from a certain anthropology that refused to acknowledge the positionality of the researcher-self. It became common in anthropology to reflect on one’s position within the research. But is that enough to address anthropology’s colonial legacies and entanglements? Are there other legacies and entanglements that remain unaddressed, undiscussed, unreflected, and continue to act as the grounds of anthropology? Are we in need of a new wave of emancipation in which we acknowledge anthropology’s history by more radically engaging with its legacies, instead of turning away from it? How do we as anthropologists, applied as well as in academia, position ourselves in this respect? How do we see the future of an anthropology that takes notice of and perhaps account for its contested history? What futures can we imagine for anthropology from this contested ground?
Speakers: Wayne Modest (RCMC/VU), Michael Ghebreab (Critical Mass) (tbc), Rebecca Bryant (Utrecht University, tbc)
Moderator: Anouk de Koning (ABv/Leiden University)
Organizer: Rita Ouédraogo (ABv/RCMC)