(Closed from Nov 2017)

The group was formed in Oct 2017, its objective of the reading group will be to engage with texts and with our own experiences of ethnographic practice to explore the various formations, practices and issues of a ‘decolonial turn’ in ethnography.  Although the starting point of the workshop is firmly based within anthropology, it is open to other disciplines which utilize ethnographic methods in the recognition that “decolonising knowledge necessitates shifting the geography of reason, which means opening reason beyond Eurocentric and provincial horizons, as well as producing knowledge beyond strict disciplinary impositions” (Maldonado-Torres 2011: 10; Maldonado-Torres 2016).

Over the last several decades, ‘reflexive ethnographies’ has been used as a shorthand for a large body of work concerned with anthropological method and the process of knowledge production. However, following on from this has emerged what has been termed a ‘decolonial turn’, the call to decolonize knowledge in the recognition that knowledge is not ‘universal and independent of context’, but is always deeply implicated in power and in the contingencies of time, location and relations of production, as well as in structures, institutions and praxis (Noxolo 2017; Esson et al 2017). It is also in the recognition that modern knowledge production is always and inherently saturated with coloniality, although not always secure in its reach and depth (Radcliffe 2017, Rivera Cusicanqui et al. 2016).

We are keen on advancing conversations initiated by the ‘decolonial turn’ and ask what would decolonizing ethnographic practice and the academy look like?  And how might this occur within an Asian context and within institutions situated in or focused on Asia?
Group administrators: Tina Shrestha and May Ngo

November 9, 2017 | 4 - 5:30pm | ARI Meeting Room

Tolia-Kelly, D. 2017, 'A day in the life of a Geographer: ‘lone’, black, female', Area, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 324–328

This piece is a narrative representation of the experience of being black and female in the discipline of Geography in the UK and beyond. The aim is to share an ethnographic research on race in Geography, based on day-to-day experience in the academy. The piece expresses some of the morphologies of black geographical life in everyday academia. The material has originally been shared in coaching and mentoring relationships with me. The quotes included have been sanctioned for use in this particular piece and were sent to me in individual emails in January 2017.

One of the aims of the reading group is to interrogate and reflect on our own practices in producing ethnographic texts. Therefore, the second text will be a chapter written by one of the reading group members.

October 10, 2017 | 4 - 5:30pm | ARI Meeting Room

Allen, Jafari Sinclaire, and Ryan Cecil Jobson. 2016. "The decolonizing generation: (race and) theory in Anthropology since the eighties." Current Anthropology 57(2): 129-48.

In the wake of anthropology’s much storied crisis of representation; attempted corrections following movements of “Third World” peoples, women, and queer folks; the recent disavowal of 1980s and 1990s reflexivity and experimentation; and what George Marcus has recently termed a “crisis of reception,” this essay seeks to critically reassess and reanimate the formative interventions of anthropologists of the African diaspora (including Africa itself )— foregrounding work that lends new insights into anthropological theory, method, and pedagogy. The intention here is not to merely redeem the pioneering insights of African diaspora anthropologists as unsung forerunners of contemporary anthropological theories (though this is a worthwhile endeavor in itself ) but rather to illuminate continued and prospective contributions of this mode of knowledge production.

Radcliffe, Sarah. 2017. “Decolonising geographical knowledges.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42: 329–333.

This piece provides an overview of decolonising approaches for geographers unfamiliar with the field, first by examining some of the ways in which decolonial scholarship seeks to build on – and go beyond – postcolonialism. Developing these points, it turns to discuss what it means to think about decolonising geography at this particular political, institutional and historical conjuncture, examining the urgencies and challenges associated in this moment particularly for British geography. The introductory intervention then moves to examine how the remaining intervention pieces understand and address the theme of decolonial scholarship and geography.