Esteban Krotz

Towards Unity in Diversity in World Anthropology

‘Other anthropologies and anthropology otherwise’ brings together the larger part of the ideas being developed and disseminated in the ‘World Anthropologies Network (WAN)’1 project set up and coordinated by Arturo Escobar and Gustavo Lins Ribeiro. As Restrepo and Escobar indicate, their article is an attempt – along similar lines to those who speak in terms of ‘native anthropologies’, ‘anthropologies of the South’, ‘peripheral anthropologies’ or ‘anthropologies with an accent’ – to recognize anthropological science as being profoundly marked by the same essential characteristic that an anthropological perspective ascribes to sociocultural reality as a whole. What is proposed, then, is the rebuilding of our science in such a way as to make this characteristic more visible by conceiving of and practicing anthropology as ‘unity in diversity’. Clearly, the concept of a ‘science’ in such a project denotes an object of study distinct from that of neopositivism, critical rationalism or logical constructivism. Rather, with or without explicit reference to Kuhn, scientific discourse here is understood to be part of a wider cultural process. As such, it is inextricably bound to those social actors who create it, validate it, spread and reproduce its ideas – the so-called scientific communities. These, in turn, inevitably bear the stamp of their specific socio-historical circumstances.2 Since the end of the Second World War, and more particularly since the end of the subsequent phase of decolonization, the number and visibility of ‘Other Anthropologies’ has been slowly growing. These anthropologies are the result of the spread of ideas from those European and North American centers where anthropology first was invented and consolidated as a scientific discipline. However, it is not a question of simple ‘replicas’ or ‘echoes’ (even if that is how they started out, and despite the persistence at their core of segments of the original, even in dominant and/or hegemonic form) but of anthropologies in their own right, rooted in and built up through specific social, cultural, scientific, academic and professional circumstances. But awareness of the existence of these Other Anthropologies is scarce both in those original centers and in the countries for so long seen from that distant perspective as no more than places to study. In fact, it would be possible to speak in terms of a definite strategy Comment

Responses to ‘“Other Anthropologies and Anthropology Otherwise”: Steps to a World Anthropologies Framework’ by Eduardo Restrepo and Arturo Escobar (June, 2005):

Narayan, Kirin (1993) ‘How Native Is a “Native” Anthropologist?’, American Anthropologist 95: 671–86. Yamashita, Shinji (2006a) ‘Reshaping Anthropology: A View from Japan’, in Gustavo Lins Ribeiro and Arturo Escobar (eds) World Anthropologies: Disciplinary Transformations in the Systems of Power. Oxford: Berg. Yamashita, Shinji (2006b) ‘Somewhere in Between: Towards an Interactive Anthropology in a World Anthropologies Project’, in Joy Hendry and Heung Wah Wong (eds) Dismantling the East–West Dichotomy: Essays in Honour of Jan van Bremen. London and New York: Routledge. Yamashita, Shinji, Joseph Bosco and J.S. Eades (eds) (2004) The Making of Anthropologies in East and Southeast Asia. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.