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2700:2022:11 [2022/05/09 00:27] – [A person contains multitudes] Ryan Schram (admin)2700:2022:11 [2022/05/09 16:26] (current) – [Building support for a claim] Ryan Schram (admin)
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 ===== Is anthropology a form of colonialism? ===== ===== Is anthropology a form of colonialism? =====
  
-According to Shah (2007), the 1901 and 1931 censuses of British India are major sources for the official sense of the category of //tribe// (see also Fuller 2017).+According to Shah (2007), the 1901 and 1931 censuses of British India are major sources for the official sense of the category of //tribe// (see also Fuller 2016, 2017).
  
 They were designed by “anthropologists,” or so they said: They were designed by “anthropologists,” or so they said:
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   * John Henry Hutton created the 1931 census. He has a more credible claim to being an anthropologist. He was appointed as a professor of anthropology at Cambridge, so some anthropologists must have thought he was OK. But even in his own day he was out of step, and relied on an evolutionary framework for human social and cultural differences.   * John Henry Hutton created the 1931 census. He has a more credible claim to being an anthropologist. He was appointed as a professor of anthropology at Cambridge, so some anthropologists must have thought he was OK. But even in his own day he was out of step, and relied on an evolutionary framework for human social and cultural differences.
  
-Insofar as Risley and Hutton’s censuses count and sort people into categories that they designed, then their “anthropology” is purely an [[:etic]] perspective.+Insofar as Risley and Hutton’s censuses count and sort people into categories that they designed, then their “anthropology” is purely an [[:emic_and_etic|etic]] perspective.
  
 ===== Does a census create an imagined community? ===== ===== Does a census create an imagined community? =====
  
-In a revised edition of Imagined Communities, Anderson says that the census, the map, and the museum are three core tools of colonial power, and three seeds of a future national consciousness (Anderson [1983] 2006, chap. 10). But why?+In a revised edition of //Imagined Communities//, Anderson says that the census, the map, and the museum are three core tools of colonial power, and three seeds of a future national consciousness (Anderson [1983] 2006, chap. 10). But why?
  
   * Answers to a census question about identity are exonyms by definition.   * Answers to a census question about identity are exonyms by definition.
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 ===== Thinking like a census taker ===== ===== Thinking like a census taker =====
  
-Anthropology today does not have any vestige of racial theories or evolutionary types. It instead frames difference in a lens of [[:cultural relativism]].+Anthropology today does not have any vestige of racial theories or evolutionary types. It instead frames difference in a lens of [[:ethnocentrism_and_cultural_relativism|cultural relativism]].
  
 Anthropology learns from the ground up, like a child being taught by a parent. But every anthropologist will always filter what they observe through categories they already possess. Everyone does that. Anthropology learns from the ground up, like a child being taught by a parent. But every anthropologist will always filter what they observe through categories they already possess. Everyone does that.
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 Marilyn Strathern on the question of personhood and social theory: Marilyn Strathern on the question of personhood and social theory:
  
-> Far from being regarded as unique entities, Melanesian persons are as dividually as they are individually conceived. They contain a generalized sociality within. Indeed, persons are frequently constructed as the plural and composite site of the relationships that produced them.+> Far from being regarded as unique entities, Melanesian persons are as dividually as they are individually conceived. They contain a generalized sociality within. Indeed, persons are frequently constructed as the plural and composite site of the relationships that produced them. (Strathern 1988, 13)  
  
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-> It is not enough, however, to substitute one antinomy for another, to conclude that Melanesians symbolize collective life as a unity, while singular persons are composite. Such a distinction implies that the relation between them might remain comparable to that between society and individual. And the problem with that as a relationship is the Western corollary: despite the difference between society and individual, indeed because of it, the one is regarded as modifying or somehow controlling the other. (Strathern 1988, 13)  +> We do not, of course, have to imagine that these ideas exist as a set of ground rules or a kind of template for everything that Melanesians do or say.... The intention is not an ontological statement to the effect that there exists a type of social life based on premises in inverse relation to our own. Rather it is to utilize the language that belongs to our own in order to create contrast internal to it. Consequently, the strategy of an us/them divide is not meant to suggest that Melanesian societies can be presented in a timeless, monolithic way.... The intention is to make explicit the practice of anthropological description itself. (Strathern 1988, 15–16)   
  
  
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   * Melanesian societies are based on a dividual person   * Melanesian societies are based on a dividual person
-    * because each person in a Melanesian society learns to think of themselves as a dividual person +    * because each person in a Melanesian society learns to think of themselves  
-      * a collection of parts of relationships, and +      * as a dividual person 
-      * a fluid self that shifts in different situations +        * a collection of parts of relationships, and 
-    * and not an individual person +        * a fluid self that shifts in different situations 
-      * a unitary, coherent, consistent mind in a single physical body +      * and not an individual person 
-      * with fixed, essential traits, and +        * a unitary, coherent, consistent mind in a single physical body 
-      * distinct from the collective forces that constrain it+        * with fixed, essential traits, and 
 +        * distinct from the collective forces that constrain it 
  
 Seeing the different assumptions that guide people’s actions should lead us to reflect on unseen similarities, not differences. Seeing the different assumptions that guide people’s actions should lead us to reflect on unseen similarities, not differences.
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 ===== Building support for a claim ===== ===== Building support for a claim =====
  
-These questions—and any essay question—has multiple possible answers. There are no right and wrong answers. Some answers have better reasons for them.+These questions—and any essay question—have multiple possible answers. There are no right and wrong answers. Some answers have better reasons for them.
  
 Your best reasons in support of an answer will be based on a close reading of the chosen scholar’s empirical research Your best reasons in support of an answer will be based on a close reading of the chosen scholar’s empirical research
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 ———. 2007. //Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology//. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. ———. 2007. //Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology//. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.
  
 +Fuller, C. J. 2016. “Colonial Anthropology and the Decline of the Raj: Caste, Religion and Political Change in India in the Early Twentieth Century1.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 26 (3): 463–86. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186315000486.
  
-Fuller, C.j. 2017. “Ethnographic inquiry in colonial India: Herbert Risley, William Crooke, and the study of tribes and castes.” //Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute// 23 (3): 603–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12654.+———. 2017. “Ethnographic inquiry in colonial India: Herbert Risley, William Crooke, and the study of tribes and castes.” //Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute// 23 (3): 603–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12654.
  
  
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