Paper short abstract:

For many public institutions, 'doing diversity' exists as a policy writing act espousing egalitarian principles without wholesale implementation. Can anthropology's failure to move from theory to praxis be solved by a pedagogic rebalancing with 'native' staff employed to decolonise the 'white' gaze?

Paper long abstract:

Western anthropology has long resisted its characterisation as 'the hand maiden of colonialism'. Its beautiful calling card as 'the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities' has seen its ethnographic exploration of human diversity provide a solid foundation establishing various important conceptual tropes. However, embedded within the discipline remains an unresolved paradox between what is taught as the ideal method of inquiry and those accepted as the ideal instrument to utilise it. Trainees in the use of participant-observation are typically warned about the dangers of 'going native' - lest they become so close to their subjects of study they lose critical distance.

But in truth, whilst the debate of what it means to 'go native' is typically discussed through the lens of anthropologists like Malinowski and his Papua New Guinea study, it may be more accurate to suggest that this is not merely an issue about going native, but also the perceived consequences of becoming or being native. Encoded in these often, racist anthropological teachings, is the inference that we don't go native because the category of 'native anthropologists' is traditionally reserved for those who are native. Eg. non-western(ised) and/or non-'white'.

As such, 'diverse' cohorts are assumed incapable of intellectual objectivity by gatekeeper disciples who fear change based on egalitarian principles, a fact reflected in the homogenised state of the curriculum and teaching staff in UK anthropology departments. Would increasing and embedding collaborative knowledge production with 'native' teachers and students lead to progressive change?