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Paper short abstract:

Decades after the Trouillot’s appeal to transcend the “savage slot”, Western anthropology is still locked in its socio-political exclusiveness. From the perspective of Slovene ethnology-cum-anthropology, I will discuss sufficient and necessary conditions to build a new, non-colonial anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

The problem with anthropology is methodological, topical and epistemological. Methodologically speaking, the predominant methodological technique, participant observation, is still its standard, although the majority of ethnographic work is actually done as rapid assessment. Continental ethnographic traditions with permanent going to the field and leaving the field to the cabinet work, is generally not considered as proper “fieldwork”. Autoethnography, the most appropriate approach for the indigenous scholars, is very often not considered as ethnography itself.

Topically, the discipline, interested in understanding the phenomenon of the whole humanity, should never be confined only for the Other.

And epistemologically speaking, knowledge of humanity may not, and should never be detached from humanity, which means, epistemological is at the same time ethical and thus political.

The main argument of the presentation will be the radical use of any available methodology, topic and epistemology to resist embedded colonial designs of Western anthropology as exploitative Western scholarship.