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Anthropology – The Basics

Anthropology – The Basics. Anthropology is a discipline that is constantly asking what its subject matter is about. Since the division of labor within the emerging sciences of the Enlightenment…….anthropology was designated as the study of ‘ primitives .’

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Anthropology – The Basics

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  1. Anthropology – The Basics • Anthropology is a discipline that is constantly asking what its subject matter is about. • Since the division of labor within the emerging sciences of the Enlightenment…….anthropology was designated as the study of ‘primitives.’ • Anthropology is…..’considered good at providing close-grained analyses of apparently irrational behaviour, performances utterances etc.’ • Study of people(s), cultures, societies, traditions, beliefs, myths, symbols, meanings, relationships, discourses, knowledge practices, world making.

  2. Accessing Local Knowledge • Since early anthropologists (Malinowski, Radcliffe Brown) fieldwork seen as the best method to access ‘local knowledge’. • Fieldwork: Long term engagements with ‘others’, usually one year, learn the language, live with locals to gain access to the ‘natives point of view’. • Intensive, site specific, holistic approach to the world(s) of others. • Move away from judgment towards understanding and meaning making. • Evans Pritchard’s classic study of The Azande and Witchcraft

  3. Colonial Engagement • As Haraway has claimed, there is no form of innocent knowledge making. • Anthropology operated, in many cases, within the governing colonial apparatus. • Local knowledge still conceived of as backward and non scientific. • Even though someone like Evans Pritchard could explain local understandings and meanings, Indigenous Knowledge was still not taken seriously as it lacked the ‘apparent’ progressivisttendencies of western knowledge practices.

  4. Anthropocene and the Re-Emergence of Local Knowledge • Anthropocene as an era of human induced climate impacts. • Generates a new set of questions, one of which is…………..How seriously do we take the knowledge systems of others? • Re-emergence of Local (Indigenous Knowledge) as potentially valuable.

  5. Integrating Indigenous knowledge (IK) • Attempted Integration of IK into Development and Conservation Agendas. • Alternate ‘ways of knowing’ (or Epistemologies) lead to various misunderstandings and conflicts. • Verran suggests that such differences arise from different metaphysical systems (the definition of what things are and the ways in which the world is divided up as a result)

  6. Indigenous knowledge (IK) • Even though IK is acknowledged as valuable we still attempt to ‘appropriate’ it within our own knowledge systems. • Verran attempts to move beyond this by suggesting that certain encounters between knowledge systems have ‘moments’ in which they recognize and respect difference, but still ‘go on’ anyhow.

  7. The Politics of Performing the Environment • Sustainable Hunting Program in Paraguay. • Agreement between a native group (Yshiro) and local government to re-introduce native hunting practices. • Key Issue: Hunting needs to be Sustainable. • Agreement breaks down after 4 months, why?

  8. Thanks for your Attention!

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