Call for Papers: Decolonizing European Anthropology?
Anthropologists in and of Europe today are once more concerned with the production of anthropological knowledge. We welcome papers that address the discussion about decolonizing European Anthropology for our upcoming symposium on June 27 and 28 at Leiden University. Please submit your abstracts of max. 250 words by April 12, 2019
Anthropologists in and of Europe today are once more concerned with the production of anthropological knowledge. The issue was discussed rigorously in the 1980s (Clifford, Fabian), and it has since been an integral part of anthropological practice. Several developments have led to a renewed interest in and critique of anthropological knowledge production. In the last decades, anthropologists have increasingly engaged a range of positions often collected under the heading of ‘decolonial critique’ (e.g. Harrison 1991, Mignolo 2007), while at the same time enduring an increasingly stronger attack on scientific knowledge production in general and for their supposed ‘leftist bias’. The European Association of Social Anthropologists’ (EASA’s) Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity (ARE) Network invites you to enter into discussion about decolonizing European Anthropology.
What would it mean to decolonize European Anthropology? What is its current state vis a vis a politics and analytics of “race,” “ethnicity,” “diversity,” and “inclusion”? Is it possible to discuss such questions with respect to a ‘European anthropology’ at all, or are the histories and present politics of different parts of Europe too divergent to do so? If not, how is anthropology constructed along these lines in its various regions? What are the continuities and what are the divergences? Who studies anthropology in Europe? Who are its students, and who are its teachers? What are its key texts? What are its key institutions? What impact are they having on the academy, and what impact are they having on social life?
How are approaches in cultural studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, and LGBTQ+ studies working in relation to those in cultural and social anthropology? How have cultural and social anthropology come to matter for minoritized populations in Europe? How can we understand the impact of their presence? To what extent are minoritized populations able to enter leadership roles in European departments of social and cultural anthropology? What might make this kind of leadership possible? What is holding it back?
We welcome papers that address the above questions for our upcoming symposium on June 27 and 28 at Leiden University. Please submit your abstracts of max. 250 words by April 12, 2019 to decolonizingeuroanth@umich.edu.