World Anthropologies and Global Health

Critique of Anthropology, 2006

In this article, anthropology is seen as a Western cosmopolitics that consolidated itself as a formal academic discipline in the 20th century within a growing Western university system that expanded throughout the world. Like other cosmopolitics, anthropology reflects the historical dynamics of the world system, especially those related to the changing roles ‘alterity’ may play in international and national scenarios. Some of the most fundamental changes in anthropology in the last century were due to changes in the subject position of anthropology’s ‘object’ par excellence, native peoples all over the planet. But, currently, there is another element which was never duly incorporated by previous critiques and is bound to impact anthropology: the increased importance of the non-hegemonic anthropologists in the production and reproduction of knowledge. Changes in the conditions of conversability among anthropologists located in different loci of the world system will impact the tensio...

■ In this article, anthropology is seen as a Western cosmopolitics that consolidated itself as a formal academic discipline in the 20th century within a growing Western university system that expanded throughout the world. Like other cosmopolitics, anthropology reflects the historical dynamics of the world system, especially those related to the changing roles 'alterity' may play in international and national scenarios. Some of the most fundamental changes in anthropology in the last century were due to changes in the subject position of anthropology's 'object' par excellence, native peoples all over the planet. But, currently, there is another element which was never duly incorporated by previous critiques and is bound to impact anthropology: the increased importance of the non-hegemonic anthropologists in the production and reproduction of knowledge. Changes in the conditions of conversability among anthropologists located in different loci of the world system will impact the tension between metropolitan provincialism and provincial cosmopolitanism, increase horizontal communication and create more plural world anthropologies. Keywords ■ global diversity and anthropology ■ metropolitan provincialism ■ provincial cosmopolitanism ■ world system of anthropology À memória de Eduardo Archetti I view the issues that anthropologists address, their theoretical preoccupations, contributions to knowledge, dilemmas and mistakes, the heuristic and epistemological capabilities of the discipline, as embedded in certain social, cultural and political dynamics that unfold in contexts which are differently and historically structured by changing power relations. The main sociological and historical forces that traverse anthropology's political and epistemological fields are connected to the dynamics of the world system and to those of the nation-states, especially regarding the changing roles that 'otherness' or 'alterity' may play in such international and national scenarios.

Focaal

Alternative Voices of Anthropology: Golden Jubilee Symposium published by Indian Anthropological Society, Kolkata, 2012

Alternative Voices of Anthropology is the print record of proceedings of an international symposium held in Kolkata during November 19-23, 2011, organized by the Indian Anthropological Society to commemorate its Golden Jubilee. The question has been raised in this volume about whether Global Anthropology should a merely continue the Euro-American theoretical trends or accommodate local and alternative voices. This article reproduces the valedictory address to discuss alternative Indian voices of Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Swami Vivekananda, Tagore, Ambedkar, Phule that provide correctives to the monovocality of Western anthropology. It also brings in examples of the ideas of the mutuality, co existential living, nature culture harmony from indigenous thought, all over the world. It looks for the solution in non Western anthropological thought for the current crisis of human civilization, afflicted by violence, climate change and unsustainable life styles, overtaking humanity and the earth planet.

2015

Th is theme section seeks to keep alive important debates about the place of anthropology in the world that have been raised periodically since the 1970s, and most recently in a special issue of this journal entitled “Changing Flows in Anthropological Knowledge” (Buchowski and Dominguez 2012). Th e three articles in this theme section consider the place of anthropology in the university system, the building of a world anthropology, and the methodological challenges of the new conditions in which we work. All three critically address the interface and relationship between areas of changing power/knowledge and their relevance to the future of anthropology: both its place in the world and its contribution to the world.

■ This article seeks to complicate the picture of a simple anthropological tradition emanating from the West that defines anthropology as a modern form of expert knowledge. It introduces a broader frame -'world anthropologies'that allows us to think about the discipline in terms of a multiple space where 'other anthropologies' and 'anthropology otherwise' may become newly visible. 'World anthropologies' involves a critical awareness of both the larger epistemic and political field in which anthropology emerged and continues to function, and of the micropractices and relations of power within and across different anthropological locations and traditions. The article revisits the critiques of the discipline developed within the dominant locations, proposes a larger framework of inquiry, and ends by suggesting a few first steps towards the positive project of imagining a plural landscape of world anthropologies. Keywords ■ geopolitics of knowledge ■ history of anthropology ■ modernity/ coloniality ■ politics of anthropology ■ world anthropologies

This paper draws attention to the categories and norms of human belonging that are produced in global institutions. To a great extent, the discipline of anthropology has been superseded as the primary source of popular knowledge of human life. The conceptualization of humanity and its communities is accomplished in more publicly persuasive ways by global agencies, in part through their use of new media. The anthropology of global governance is instrumental and strategic, involving identification and categorization of beneficiary peoples, groups, and communities, including conceptions about the nature of their oppression and their distinct human qualities that make them proper subjects of the rights and benefits of global governance initiatives.

Collaborative Anthropologies, 2008

book reviews • 205 other african countries. currently he is the chair of the Department of anthropology at Michigan state University and a board member of the international Work group for indigenous affairs. Megan Biesele and Robert K. Hitchcock have just completed a new book, The Ju/'hoan San of Namibia since Independence: Development, Democracy, and Indigenous Voices in Namibia, to be published by Berghahn Books (Oxford).