Decolonizing Anthropology

3 units

Through books like Linda Tuhiwai Smith's book Decolonizing Methodology, tribal IRB's, and open letters, Indigenous people and tribal governments make clear how they want scientists to conduct research with their communities. How does anthropology reckon with its past ties with colonialism? How do we responsibly use scholarship from the past while working toward decolonization and anti-racism? This class will compare work by Indigenous people and people of color calling for decolonization and anti-racism, studies done using decolonizing methodologies, and widely read works of anthropology throughout the discipline's history. For example, we will read an excerpt from an anthropology textbook assigned at WashU in 2000 about an Eskimo and compare it to Native Alaskan scholar Heather Gordon's participatory research with Native Alaskans. During the last part of the class, we will learn about the roots of global inequality to highlight the structural conditions.