Dialectical Anthropology - Call for Papers: Bringing Imperialism Back In
Bringing imperialism back in: For an anthropology of empire in the 21st century Workshop/Special Issue Call for Papers
September 2022
CfP: Bringing Imperialism Back In (this opens in a new tab)
Geoffrey Aung
Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Associate
University of Vienna, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Stephen Campbell
Assistant Professor
Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences
Scholarly attention to decolonial thought and practice has surged over the past decade. We can read this trend as demonstrating the efficacy of struggles against racism and Eurocentrism in the academy. As such, it is a welcome development, especially given the historical complicity of Western academic institutions in imperialist and settler colonial projects (Smith 2013: 64–65). Yet, as Leon Moosavi (2020) highlights in a review of recent decolonial scholarship, much of this literature remains coloured by “Northerncentrism” due to the marginalisation of earlier anti-imperialist intellectuals, activists, and militants from the global South.
There are two notable implications arising from this scholarly displacement of earlier “Third World” anti-imperialism. First, as contemporary theorists of decoloniality have turned, instead, to demarcating “alternative epistemic voice,” the result, observes Sujata Patel (2021), has been the “absence, unfortunately, of political economy, and of a discussion of economic development in decoloniality.” Second, decolonial theorising grounded in the settler colonial experience has not had to confront, argues Mahmoud Mamdani (2021), the historical lessons of indirect colonial rule, whereby late-19th century colonial ideologues shifted their self-rationalising from an assimilative “civilising mission” to a protectionist mandate ostensibly geared to conserving culturally defined native identities threatened by the disruptions of colonial modernity. An understanding of the latter is pertinent because of how a non-Western traditionalism can align with the colonial project—even masking imperial relations—and because the neocolonial arrangement that replaced formal colonialism is itself a variant of indirect rule (Nkrumah 1965; Rodney 1990: 59).
For anthropology, it was under the influence of mid-20th century Asian and African national liberation movements that disciplinary anti-imperialism achieved its greatest influence. In 1967, Kathleen Gough published “Anthropology and Imperialism,” wherein she argued that anthropologists had “failed to study Western imperialism as a social system, or even to adequately explore the effects of imperialism on the societies we studied” (19). Shortly thereafter, in 1970, Eric Wolf and Joseph Jorgensen penned “Anthropology on the Warpath in Thailand,” wherein they denounced the participation of professional anthropologists in US counterinsurgency operations. Subsequently, in 1973, Talal Asad published his influential volume, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. A central argument of Asad’s contribution is that, by analysing tribal units as distinct socio-cultural wholes, British social anthropologists had conceptually erased from their ethnographies the imperial relations undergirding indirect colonial rule. These interventions remain relevant, we argue, for an anthropology of empire in the 21st century.
In recent years, there has been renewed interest in theorising present-day imperialism as an extractive relation (e.g., Patnaik and Patnaik 2016; Suwandi 2019). In anthropology, however, notwithstanding a surge in writing on decolonisation, a focus on imperialism per se remains minimal (see Price 2016; Lutz 2009; Krupa 2022: 47 - 55). Moreover, prominent recent anthropological theorising around imperialism (e.g., Stoler 2016 and McGranahan and Collins 2018), has concerned itself with current disciplinary interests—with performativity, governmentality, and affect, for example—while shying away from the imperialist political economy that vexed an earlier generation of “Third World” revolutionaries.
With these concerns in mind, we advocate bringing imperialism, as a specifically capitalist formation, “back in” to contemporary anthropological research and analysis. In conjunction, we call for revisiting “anti-imperialist theory from the south” as a conceptual resource for developing a renewed anthropology of empire in the present. We invite papers of approximately 7,000 words for a small, online workshop of 6 - 7 participants, to be held in May 2023 with the aim of putting together a special issue for Dialectical Anthropology. We are specifically looking for contributions that put contemporary ethnographic research into conversation with explicit anti-imperialist analysis—with the classic critiques of “Third World” anticolonial revolutionaries, or with more recent radical southern political economic theorising, and/or with the mid-20th century anthropological interventions cited above.
Interested individuals should submit a working title and paper abstract of 200-250 words by November 1st, 2022.
Geoffrey Aung (geoffrey.aung@univie.ac.at)
Stephen Campbell (stephen.campbell@ntu.edu.sg)