A New Anthropology Curriculum, Designed for the Future
11 - Transforming Anthropology: Moving Beyond the Human and Indigenising the Discipline
This week, to finish the subject, we will be focusing on the value of anthropology, and the ways in which the discipline can transform in order to reach its full potential. After a quick recap of the issues of the discipline which we discussed last week, we’ll be turning to consider how best anthropology’s value can be harnessed into the future.
The transformation of anthropology has two key components: integrating more-than-human anthropology as a foundational study to the discipline, and Indigenising anthropology. To critically engage with this notion of transformation, we will be focusing on two key readings that will highlight anthropology's need to change. In doing so we will be paying close attention to post-human exceptionalism and why it’s necessary to study more-than-human worlds to understand humans – with a particular focus on the notion of the Anthropocene. Building on this concept we will be looking at the need for anthropology to be Indigenised if it is going to transform.
Students will be required to engage with the use and potential of anthropology as a social science and its ability to address social issues.
Tutorial Questions
What is the value of anthropology?
Does anthropology need to transform? If so, why? If not, why not?
What are the key arguments of moving beyond human exceptionalism within anthropology and engaging with the more than human world?
Why does anthropology need to be Indigenised if anthropology were to be transformed along this path?
Is there a future for anthropology?
Recommended
Helmreich, S & Kirksey, S 2010, ‘The emergence of multispecies ethnography’, The American Anthropologist Association, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 545-576.
Kai’ili, T 2012, ‘Felavai, interweaving indigeneity and anthropology: The era of indigenising anthropology’, in Anthropologists, Indigenous scholars and the research endeavour, Routledge, London.
Lien, M & Pálsson G 2019, ‘Ethnography beyond human: The ‘other-than-human' in ethnographic work’, Ethnos Journal of Anthropology, vol. 86, no. 1, pp. 1-20..
Smith, LT 1999, Decolonising methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples, Zed Books, London.
Smith, LT 2015, ‘Kaupapa Māori research -- Some Kaupapa Māori principles’, in Kaupapa Rangahau: A collection of readings from the Kaupapa Rangahau workshop series, Te Kotahi Research Institute, Hamilton, pp. 46-52.
Todd Z 2015, 'Indigenizing the anthropocene', in H Davis and E Turpin (eds), Art in the anthropocene: Encounters among aesthetics, politics, environments and epistemologies, Open Humanities Press, London, pp. 241-254.
Harriet Hurley
Born on Waveroo country, raised on Jaitmatang land of the Dhudhuroa people and now living in Wurundjeri country, I am a young academic concerned with the perils of capitalism and the price the Earth is paying... I am currently writing my thesis on ethical consumption, following the trail of the illusive mineral mica and its journey from mines to makeup.