Anthropology for Liberation readings 2.0

In 2017 I taught a new course for the first time: Anthropology for Liberation. Here’s the short course description:

How can Anthropology advance human emancipation from racism, gender inequality, class disparities, and other forms of oppression and exploitation? In this course we will consider what it means to approach anthropology from a decolonising perspective, and explore what an anthropology for liberation might look like in theory and practice, drawing on examples from Asia, Oceania, and Latin America.

I’ve written about how that went in an article called Pedagogical Experiments in an Anthropology for Liberation, and shared the list of readings from that first offering in a previous blog post.

In 2019 I taught the course for the second time, significantly revised based on student feedback, and with a new reading list. I expanded the reading list to include a wider range of material, including blog posts, videos, zines, and podcasts alongside academic articles. I’ll revise it again when I teach it later this year. Here’s what we engaged with in 2019:

Week 1

McGranahan, Carole and Uzma Z. Rizvi. 19 April 2016. “Decolonizing Anthropology.” Decolonizing Anthropology series, SavageMinds. https://savageminds.org/2016/04/19/decolonizing-anthropology/#more-19536

Alonso Bejarano, Carolina, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García, and Daniel M Goldstein. 2019. “Chapter 1. Colonial Anthropology and its Alternatives.” In Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Pages 17-37.

Tuck, Eve, and K Wayne Yang. 2012. “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1): 1–40.

Week 2

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 2012. “Chapter 3. Colonizing Knowledges.” In Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2nd Edition). London and New York: Zed Books. Pages 117-143.

Singer, Andre (director). 1986. Off the Verandah – Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942). London: Royal Anthropological Institute. 54 mins.

Rooney, Michelle Nayahamui. 2018. “Other.” Hot Spots, Fieldsights, September 26. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/other

Week 3

George, Lily. 2017. “Stirring Up Silence.” Commoning Ethnography 1 (1): 107–12.

Salmond, Amiria J. M. 2019. “Comparing Relations: Whakapapa and Genealogical Method.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 128 (1): 107–29.

Fabish, Rachael. 2014. “Chapter 1. Methodology: ‘Learning to be affected’ by Kaupapa Māori.” In Black Rainbow: Stories of Māori and Pākehā working across difference. PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington. Pages 23-60.

Indigenous Action Media. 2014. Accomplices not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex – an Indigenous perspective & provocation. Pages 1-10. http://www.indigenousaction.org/wp-content/uploads/Accomplices-Not-Allies-print.pdf

Week 4

Stewart, Georgina. 2017. “The ‘Hau’ of Research: Mauss Meets Kaupapa Māori.” Journal of World Philosophies 2 (1): 1–11.

Anae, Melani. 2010. “Teu Le Va: Toward a ‘Native’ Anthropology.” Pacific Studies 33 (2/3): 222–40.

Uperesa, Fa’anofo Lisaclaire. 2010. “A Different Weight: Tension and Promise in “Indigenous Anthropology”.” Pacific Studies 33 (2): 280–300.

Radebe, Zowda. 23 May 2016. “On Decolonising Anthropology.” Decolonizing Anthropology series, SavageMinds. https://savageminds.org/2016/05/23/on-decolonising-anthropology/

Week 5

Teaiwa, Teresia. 2014. “The Ancestors We Get to Choose: White Influences I Won’t Deny.” In Theorizing Native Studies, edited by Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith, 43–56. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Harrison, Faye V. 2016. “Theorizing in Ex-Centric Sites.” Anthropological Theory 16 (2-3): 160–76.

McGuirk, Siobhan. 2018. “AnthroBites: Feminist Anthropology.” AnthroPod, Fieldsights, March 15. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthrobites-feminist-anthropology

Week 6

Aikman, Pounamu Jade William Emery. 2017. “Trouble on the Frontier: Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Sovereignty, and State Violence.” Sites: A journal of social anthropology and cultural studies 14 (1): 56–79. (I also asked them to watch Taika Waititi’s 2016 film Hunt for the Wilderpeople).

Webby, Kim (director). 2015. The Price of Peace. 1hr 33 mins.

Awatere, Donna. 1982. “Maori Sovereignty.” Broadsheet: New Zealand’s Feminist Magazine 100: 38-42.

Rewhiti, Debbie. 1984. “The Impact of Maori Sovereignty: An Interview with Donna Awatere and Merata Mita.” Broadsheet: New Zealand’s Feminist Magazine 124: 12-13.

Week 7

Wilbur, Matika and Adrienne Keene. 19 March 2019. “Ep #5: Decolonizing Sex.” All My Relations Podcast, 43min. https://radiopublic.com/all-my-relations-podcast-Wxxd3o/s1!5a0f7

Boellstorff, T., M. Cabral, M. Cardenas, T. Cotten, E. A. Stanley, K. Young, and A. Z. Aizura. 2014. “Decolonizing Transgender: A Roundtable Discussion.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (3): 419–39.

Laing, Marie. 2018. Two-Spirit: Conversations with Young Two-Spirit, Trans and Queer Indigenous People in Toronto. https://www.twospiritresearchzine.com/

Week 8

Brown, Dominic (director). 2009. Forgotten Bird of Paradise. Dancing Turtle Films. 26min.

Pouwer, Jan. 1999. “The Colonisation, Decolonisation and Recolonisation of West New Guinea.” The Journal of Pacific History 34 (2): 157–79.

Banivanua-Mar, Tracey. 2008. ““A Thousand Miles of Cannibal Lands”: Imagining Away Genocide in the Re-Colonization of West Papua.” Journal of Genocide Research 10 (4): 583–602.

Kirksey, S. Eben, and J. A. D. Roemajauw. 2002. “The Wild Terrorist Gang: The Semantics of Violence and Self-Determination in West Papua.” Oxford Development Studies 30 (2): 189–203.

Week 9

Harrison, Tere. 2016. Run It Straight (for West Papua). Fires of Kiwa Films. 14mins.

Te Ahi Kaa. 21 December 2014. The West Papua Fight for Sovereignty. RNZ. 11mins. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/teahikaa/audio/20161811/the-west-papua-fight-for-sovereignty

Webb-Gannon, Camellia. 2017. “Effecting Change Through Peace Research in a Methodological ‘No-Man’s Land’: A Case Study of West Papua.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 18 (1): 18–35.

Kirsch, Stuart. 2018. “Chapter 2. When Contributions are Elusive.” Engaged Anthropology: Politics Beyond the Text. Oakland: University of California Press.

Week 10

Hayden, Tom. 2002. “Introduction.” In The Zapatista Reader, edited by Tom Hayden. New York : Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books.

Hayden, Tom. 2002. “Zapatistas: A brief historical timeline.” In The Zapatista Reader, edited by Tom Hayden. New York : Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books.

Vice. 2014. The Zapatista Uprising (20 Years Later). 12 mins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HAw8vqczJw

González, Roberto J. 2004. “From Indigenismo to Zapatismo: Theory and Practice in Mexican Anthropology.” Human Organization 63 (2): 141.

Gledhill, John. 2008. “Introduction: Anthropological perspectives on Indigenous resurgence in Chiapas.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 15 (5): 483-505.

Week 11

Castillo, Rosalva Aída Hernández. 1997. “Between Hope and Adversity: The Struggle of Organized Women in Chiapas Since the Zapatista Uprising.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 3 (1): 102–20.

Cappelli, Mary Louisa. 2018. “Toward Enacting a Zapatista Feminist Agenda Somewhere in La Selva Lacondona: We Are All Marias.” Cogent Arts & Humanities 5 (1): 1-13.

Mora, Mariana. 2017. “Chapter 5. Women’s Collectives and the Politicized (Re)Production of Social Life.” In Kuxlejal Politics Indigenous Autonomy, Race, and Decolonizing Research in Zapatista Communities. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Nash, June. 2003. “Indigenous Development Alternatives.” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 32 (1 Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena): 57–98.

Week 12

Gomberg‐Muñoz, Ruth. 2018. “The Complicit Anthropologist.” Journal for the Anthropology of North America 21 (1): 36-37.

Loperena, Christopher Anthony. 2016. “A Divided Community: The Ethics and Politics of Activist Research.” Current Anthropology 57 (3): 322–46.

Case, Emalani. 2019. “I Ka Piko, to the Summit: Resistance From the Mountain to the Sea.” The Journal of Pacific History 54 (2): 166–81.

Knowing that students might not have time to get through everything assigned each week, I designed a weekly tutorial activity where four students would choose one of the assigned items (a different one each) and give a short written or verbal presentation about it to their tutorial group. The goal was not to summarise the item, but to link it to course themes and pose questions for their group to discuss together. How well that worked is a post for another day!