Contribution short abstract:

I’ll discuss the tension between Western appropriation of Indigenous concepts and Indigenous position within a Western framework. I propose an ethnographic practice that is neither romanticizing nor a detached critique, proposing a third alternative.

Contribution long abstract:

As an anthropologist working in Hawai‘i with Indigenous microbiologists, my contribution to the roundtable proposes that of nuancing what ‘appropriation’ and ‘incorporation’ means. There is increasing evidence of the fact that Western scientific concepts and ideas partly derive from the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge, in addition to the appropriation of their lands, resources and labour. In Hawai’i, Indigenous microbiologists are trying to transform Western science from within: they incorporate knowledge, protocols and formats derived from Indigenous chants and other traditional written documents into Western standards of evaluation, conduct and dissemination of research and education. On one hand, these processes bring momentum and strength to anthropological and social sciences’s questioning of what science is and what it can be otherwise. On the other hand, certain aspects of Indigenous science seem unable to escape the neoliberal and colonial social structure which regulates and takes advantage of Indigenous scientists’s progressive aspirations. Between joining forces or taking a distant critical gaze, a third collaborative way is possible, that take stock of anthropology’s critique pursuing a shared political vision with indigenous communities.