ANTH 100 Week 3 Notes

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Anthropology

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Oct 30, 2023

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ANTH 100 Week 3 Notes (Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter) 23 JAN Colonialism: the project of political domination by one group over another; includes domination of land, economy, culture, political system, and religion ● Historical periods of colonialism: ○ 11th-century Crusades ○ 14th-century conquest of the Americas ○ European conquest in the 19th century of over half the planet ○ Settler colonialism continues today ● Settler colonialism → the controller tries to take the land ● Explicit and implicit forms of power ○ Explicit: enslavement, wage labour, conquest of land, taxes, setting up new government, destruction of whole communities ○ Implicit: control over culture, language, worldview, loyalties (to the colonizers)/allegiances Coloniality → long-standing patterns of power that emerge from colonialism that define culture, labour, intersubjective (social) relations, and knowledge production well beyond the limits of colonial administrations. ● Maintained in books, criteria for academic performance, cultural patterns, common sense, self-image of people, aspirations of self, etc ● Representation and how they internalized the representation ● When the representation is distributed, they settle and become a ‘truth’

Colonialism and Knowledge in Afghanistan ● Mountstuart Elphinstone (from Scotland) ○ First person to study Afghanistan through travel ○ Appointed to East India Company in India (1976) ○ First British to enjoy the court of Kabul under Shah Shuja by Indian governor Lord Minto ○ Part of the first British diplomatic mission to Afghanistan in 1808 ○ His mission put Afghanistan on the colonial map ● How an attempt to produce objective knowledge becomes harmful → used towards colonial domination ○ Mounstuart Elphinstone’s account of Kabul, Afghanistan ○ Published in 1815 ○ Based on hearsay and anecdotal reports ○ Leads to generalizations ● How is the account colonial? ○ Elphinstone’s account is different from other colonial accounts → his account was more intellectually curious, did not associate tribe with race, see similarities with his own society ○ BUT, his account becomes harmful because future colonial administrators use his ideas (generalizations) to justify British colonialism in Afghanistan in 1838 and 1878 ○ His account sets the stage for the policy reports and research of future colonial administrators Talal Asad ● Impact of colonialism on Egypt Introduction: Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter ● British social anthropology is not appreciated as it used to be ● At a certain period, social anthropology was about the society of primitive societies, making it distinct from Sociology ● Now, the objects and methods of Anthropology changed to study simple and complex societies; use participant observation, statistical techniques, historical archives, and literary sources; similar to other subjects ● WW2 and decolonization movements change anthropology ● Anthropology apprehends the world in it is located, the world also determines how anthropology will apprehend it ● Functionalism did not allow anthropology to understand where societies fit in the global system of power ● Anthropology is rooted in unequal power encounters between the West and Third World which goes back to the emergence of bourgeois Europe; this gives the West access to cultural and historical information about the societies they dominated

25 JAN Midterm ● 2 short essay questions ○ Focus on explaining how a particular concept has been explored by different anthropologists (author of assigned reading material/mentioned in lecture) ○ Methods of cultural anthropology ○ Cite an author and a minimum number ○ Example: what does a functionalist perspective in anthropology seek to understand about culture and what are its limitations, please cite at least one author in your response ● Word count → 150-250 words ● Handwritten ● 50 mins ● 30 per essay, 10 → accuracy in use of concept and author and relationship, 10 → abide word count and cited materiall according to question, 10 → clarity ● Study tips → review lecture notes, assigned readings, not about specific antropologists biography or ethnographic details (Kula → concept and what Malinowksi is trying to argue by examining the gift exchange) ● Citation of authors → no need separate page, informing (According to ….) ● Feb 6 is not subject to midterm Continuation of 23 Jan ● Asad’s point → anthropology historically has been shaped by the relationship between the West and the Global South (previously colonized) ○ Gives the West access to cultural and historical information ○ Need to understand the conditions of scholars in the West that allow them to go to the countries, sometimes they are part of colonial expedition; access to financial capital, etc; a privilege ● Ask who is the audience of anthropological knowledge ○ Elphinstone → colonial administrator? ● What are the conditions that allow us to study the people and places we study ● Should anthropologists promote the well-being of the people they study through their research ● Frants Fanon self/other binary → human beings tend to look at other to validate themselves

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*encounter → anthropologists and the people they study Televisions and the Afghan Culture Wars ● Goals ○ Counter prevailing stereotypes about Afghan culture as static, unchanging, and hbound by archaic tradition ○ Redirect the global dialogue about Afghanistans to local Afghans temselves ○ Televisions is the place that ○ Imperialism → the policy of exerting domination of other territories through direct and/or indirect control their political/economic systems ○ Imperialism in the text → different development agencies in Afghanistan led by the us ● Argument → despite the fact that media producers are operating in arenas that face many threats, they are supported by the popularity of their work, they create a space for activism ● Countering stereotypes (put in place by colonial representation) ○ Prevailing image ■ Hopeless landscape ■ Powerless people passive victims of backward traditions of another time ■ Women as passive and needing to be saved (post 9/11 discourse); ignores the long history that women in Afghanistan are fighting for equality ○ Reality ■ Hopeful about the future ■ Engage in healthy debate about liberty and democracy ■ Women are active participants in media making ● Methods ○ 2008-2014 multi-sited fieldwork → across Afghanistan, neighbour countries (the Afghan televisions also go there) ○ Primarily interviews (109) with media makers and consumers ○ Auto-ethnography ■ Anthropologist use their own lived experience to interpret the social dynamics they have observed in the field ■ Has to be paired with other methods (participant observation, etc) ● Talks about her experience growing up in 1970s Afghan ● Family members’ experiences and participation in television and radio

○ How is the project born? ■ Interviews with key figures and TV consumers across class backgrounds ■ Conducted in Dari and Pashto ■ Took place in their homes to distinguish how the issues are discussed publicly and privately (what they say vs what they do) Chapter 6: Reception and Audiences ● Television producers/ownners ○ Stereotype audiences into types, being objectified ○ Create demographic studies to show they have viewership to international donors ○ See audience as having unreasonable expectations of them, some see audience concerts as valid ● Audience conceptions of television producer surveys ○ Skeptical about surveys ○ Don’t like being treated as statistics ○ Reception studies → look at what viewers watch and want Osman differences with colonial accounts of Afghanistan ● Avoid generalizations ● Discuss the perspectives of people that were interviewed ● Directly quotes the people ● Clear about where they visited and what they left out (not claiming about holistic, all-encompassing study) ● Does not treat culture as static

27 JAN Osman’s text counters the stereotypes created from Elphinstone’s account, uses auto-ethnography from her own lived experience to analyse the social dynamics They should participate with the culture and situate themselves in the community. They should treat the people not as survey variables, they need to let go the power they were given by their government and take part to truly be able to see from the people’s perspective. Try to connect to the community, dont generalize (Acknowledge the differences_, humanize, not assume, there needs to be reciprocal aspect, compensation, both getting something out of it Answer 1 I think studying something using a colonial framework means that the theories and ideas are made through the viewpoint of the Western society or colonizers, which usually means that there is a power imbalance and hierarchy between the anthropologists and the community where the anthropologists are placed higher. Therefore, I feel that there are generalizations being made which doesn’t fully reflect the culture of the community being studied. This in turn, labels the community as the ‘other’ to validate the West. Answer 2 Anthropologists should be aware of the privilege and conditions that allow them to conduct their work. They should be aware of the power and influence they have, hence, they need to be mindful to avoid creating generalizations that could harm the community. As Zoe Todd said, they should speak with rather than speak for the people. There also need to be a compensation towards the communities to give back to the community for the value of information they gave and enforce reciprocity.

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Colonial framework ● Unpack the relationship between knowledge and colonialism, anthropology ○ Anthropology makes it possible to understand the people, colonizers use it to make it easier to colonize ● Knowledge is power, knowledge as power ○ Knowledge produces power, but power is propagating a particular brand of knowledge, creating an identity about a community ● Cultural technologies of rule ○ Control over language, clothing, food, lifestyle, etc Anthropology as a handmaiden to colonialism ● British social anthro began with the study of the primitive other, ● Must examine the relationship between Europranized elites and the traditional masses in the Third World ● Power relations implicit in anthropology - lack of critical reflexivity ● Generate knowledge, inequalities, and power Need to think of knowledge as gift; there is a reciprocal Colonialism and its form of knowledge in Afghanistan ● Helped colonizers move to Afghanistan ● Justify colonialism Osman ● The medium → televisions, media ● Motive → counter prevailing stereotypes- redirect the global dialogue about Afghanistan to local Afghans themselves -self-representations/who speaks of and for who ● The method → 109 interviews, autoethnography, the language used Similarities between Osman and Elphinstone ● They are both going into the research with the intent of understanding the culture of Afghanistan more and debunking the negative generalizations about them Colonialism vs coloniality ● Colonialism → a range of time ● Coloniality → survives colonialism, remains after colonizers have left ○ Long-standing patterns and structures of power that are born out of colonialism to survive ○ Kept alive every day in books, aspirations, academic performance, self-image, etc ● What is post about post-coloniality

How to decolonize anthropology in Canada (Zoe Todd) ● Bridge the divide between lived experience and scholarship; the personal informs the political ● Reciprocal relationality between academic spaces and the lands and territories we live and work in ● Speak with rather than speak for - decenter the anthropologist self, supremacy/fragility ● The participatory ethos, the intensive commitment to time