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- Convenors:
-
Ritu Verma
(University of California Los Angeles, and Carleton University)
Kiran Jayaram (University of South Florida)
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Short Abstract:
Although under-represented, new anthropologies often lack critical analysis of their development, institutionalization and teaching. This panel explores a plurality of experiential and ethnographic findings of processes of knowledge production in ex-centric sites - from challenges to best practices.
Long Abstract:
Many so-called peripheral anthropologies existed in the Global South since the first half of the 20th century. The discipline emerged in part to document, through ethnography, cultural practices, relations and histories in locales where anthropological processes of knowledge production were under-represented, under-studied, emergent, or lacked distinct departmental structure. New anthropologies developed in contexts of rapid socio-cultural change in response to intensifications in globalization, climate change, development, authoritarianism, and other crises. Yet, most scholars from dominant anthropological traditions only began to recognize their relevance in the 1980s, with notable publications including Ethnos (1982), Decolonizing Anthropology (1991), World Anthropologies (2005) and African Anthropologies (2006). Conversely, existing works often lacked ethnographically-grounded conceptualizations of the unfolding process of development, institutionalization, teaching or challenges of the discipline in historically and politically-charged contexts. This panel draws upon experiential and ethnographic findings about such processes at what Harrison (2016) calls ex-centric sites (i.e. Africa, Americas, Asia, Eastern Europe, Oceania). What practices were engaged to develop anthropology programs, and what challenges were faced? What obstacles, resistances or ethical dilemmas (i.e. policy, market, socio-cultural, ideological) affected the establishment of the discipline, its institutionalization, and career trajectories? How did multiple and evolving meanings of anthropology shape curricula, and inter-relationships between instructors’ pedagogical approaches and student learning? This panel examines the emergence of new anthropologies in the face of contemporary political-economic and decolonial challenges. In doing so, it brings together case studies that explore the interplay of academic and non-academic actors in complex processes of representation, intellectual production and narrative boundary-making.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 27 June, 2024, -Ritu Verma (University of California Los Angeles, and Carleton University)
Paper short abstract:
Anthropology exists at the periphery of higher education in Bhutan, while remaining isolated from the wider discipline and critical pedagogy. This paper reflects on the development, institutionalization and contestations that emerge in advancing anthropology as an academic field of scholarship.
Paper long abstract:
Bhutan is regarded as both the last culturally-preserved Himalayan Kingdom, and the most understudied ethnographic locales in the world. In the face of rapid change, there exists critical gaps in ethnographic and qualitative understanding of the socio-cultural and political-ecological effects of development, globalization, climate change and regional geopolitics on people and their environments. Despite the nation’s path-breaking recognition of the central role of culture as a development policy goal, the secular study and documentation of cultural practices, relations and histories remain under-represented, under-studied and marginalized. Anthropology as an emergent scholarly field exists at the periphery of higher education, while remaining isolated from the wider discipline in terms of anthropological networks, theoretical engagement and intellectual debate. In a research landscape dominated by quantitative methods and policy shifts towards biophysical education, the discipline faces challenges in its development, institutionalization, professionalization and critical pedagogy. These dynamics are nuanced by an interplay of academic and non-academic actors in complex processes of representation, intellectual production, contestation and narrative boundary-making regarding anthropological contributions, academic curricula, its scientific ‘relevance’, and its identity and cohesion as a field of scholarship. This paper draws on long-term ethnographic research and experiential findings from efforts to develop an anthropology doctoral program in Bhutan. Beyond simple north-south binaries, it explores emergent tensions at the cross-currents of decolonizing anthropology that unsettle the discipline more broadly, and maintaining critically grounded theoretical and ethnographic analysis as hallmarks of the discipline that unsettle the local institutional modalities of crypto-colonial states in regulating academic knowledge and research.
Kiran Jayaram (University of South Florida)
Paper short abstract:
Using anthropological research in three higher education contexts, I describe initial findings on cultural patterns and divergences in the creation of anthropologists in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and India.
Paper long abstract:
Globally, social scientists in recent decades have increasingly examined how conceptualizations of their disciplines have privileged scholars from the United States and Western Europe. To address this imbalance, anthropologists developed the concept of world anthropologies. However, few of these works have addressed structural differences related to curriculum materials and cultural dynamics of teaching and learning in a particular discipline. In the anthropology of education, extensive studies have focused on K-12 school engagements and on university student experiences globally. As a result, scholarship on anthropological training worldwide fosters the notion that education consists almost wholly of individual fieldwork (ignoring classwork), thus marginalizing the work of university professors, students as learnings, and the broader cultural context. Science and Technology Studies has turned the research focus on the knowledge producers. This paper furthers this corrective by analyzing the teaching practices, required readings, assigned coursework at universities in the Caribbean and India, and the cultural dynamics that affect who studies anthropology. My research addresses the question, “how is an anthropologist created?" Using anthropological research in three higher education contexts, I describe initial findings on cultural patterns and divergences in the creation of anthropologists in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and India. I posit that a blueprint for equitable and productive academic collaborations across the globe requires consideration of specific teaching and learning practices.
Mateja Habinc
Paper short abstract:
The presentation will give a brief introduction to the history of ethnology and anthropology as academic disciplines in Slovenia, focusing on the efforts of the last decades to impart ethnological and anthropological knowledge outside the academic education system.
Paper long abstract:
Ethnology and cultural anthropology in Slovenia: Discipline at and beyond the academia
Ethnology as an academic discipline in Slovenia will celebrate its 85th anniversary in 2025. Ethnology has been intertwined with anthropology since the last decades of the 20th century, which was also the time when topics and approaches of both disciplines were introduced into primary and secondary education. The presentation will give a brief introduction to the history of ethnology and anthropology as academic disciplines in Slovenia, while it will focus mostly on the efforts of the last decades to introduce ethnological and anthropological knowledge outside the Slovenian academic education system. Therefore, the curricula of some primary and secondary school courses that include ethnological and anthropological topics are presented and analysed. It turns out that, on the one hand, heritage, local and regional traditions are strongly emphasised, while their commodification, entrepreneurial application and community and identity building are seen as the ultimate goals of education. On the other hand, minorities, diversity, tolerance, human rights and similar social or power-related issues have also recently received some attention in the curricula. The presentation will also illustrate how museum education has gradually been introduced in both national and regional museums with their ethnology departments. And as the analysis will show, all these processes have not been accompanied by a systematic reflection at the academic level, as the study of ethnology and cultural anthropology will not offer a specialisation in the anthropology of education until 2024.
Cherifa Bridja (University Oran)
Paper short abstract:
We will be talk about the gradual change in the status of anthropology: after it was completely rejected, it is now taught in Algerian universities and recognized in academies. This is what we will see in this scientific article. We will detail the process of this science.
Paper long abstract:
Algeria knew anthropology through the military studies presented by the French military class during the occupation of Algeria, and it was even called “colonial anthropology”.
Because it was the military class that was interested in this type of study to know the conditions and circumstances of the local population, it was therefore a strategy to overcome popular resistance in Algeria during the first years of the French occupation from Algeria.
These anthropological studies provided a comprehensive overview of Algerian society and its conditions during the occupation and the machinations to which it was subjected by a “civilized” state.
What we can see is that these anthropological studies did not carry with them anthropological science in itself. On the contrary, we find that the abundance of literature in this area includes a significant amount of information interspersed with non-scientific analyses, according to its authors. to their status and the intended political objectives, supplemented by military personnel, in particular officers and administrators, using the anthropology dominant at the time in European laboratories, which disdained the cultures of non-European peoples and non-Christian religions, all in the service of specific objectives aimed at consolidating European colonial cultural hegemony.
Then, over time and changing conditions, the status of anthropology gradually changed: it became taught in Algerian universities and recognized in academies. Here is what we will see in this scientific article. We will detail the process of this science.