User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar 2020/21)/Seminar 18/Power/Power in Anthropology

The Power of Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity and, as such, the way anthropologists depict certain civilizations can have a great impact on how these civilisations are perceived. Anthropologists have promoted the eugenics movement and justified the race theories propagated by the Nazis by providing pseudoscientific evidence to prove the superiority of the so-called Aryan race . The popularisation of these ideas contributed to the toleration of the Holocaust by large parts of the German society during Nazi rule.

Albeit an extreme example, it illustrates the power of anthropology to influence human decisions, not through direct coercion, but through the employment of strategies that promote a certain view of certain people. Nowadays, the situation is not as extreme but the reasoning still applies; the American Anthropologist, the paper of the American Anthropological Association, admits that there has been a relative lack of research within anthropology into how the power white supremacy has influenced societies . A shortage of such studies can have the effect of a lack of understanding of the dynamics of white supremacy and how these dynamics can be broken, e.g. most field workers in the humanitarian aid sector are white US Americans or Europeans ; the aid agencies prefer hiring these internationals to hiring locals and they only use a very limited amount of input from locals, which suggests they value their opinions less . This insufficiency of diversity in perspectives can have the consequence that solutions to local problems are often devised in western terms, which may not work in non-western countries. The lack of appreciation for local input perpetuates the image of the white savior with superior knowledge and skills .

However, this does not nullify the value of anthropological insights; reliable, unbiased anthropological insights can go a long way for devising appropriate policies to improve a country’s situation and for managing the cultural differences in today’s multicultural societies by understanding how to bridge the cultural divides .

Power Dynamics within Anthropology

Within anthropology, works by non-white anthropologists have historically been marginally used and, when used, usually merely when the works are concerned with the native cultures of the particular non-white anthropologists . Consequently, there may be a lack of diversity in opinions and teachings in anthropology, which therefore implicitly cultivates only certain modes of thought within anthropology. For example, white anthropologists have made the mistake of interpreting non-western cultures through the western lens that they grew up with, which can inhibit the proper understanding of these cultures . This lack of diversity in anthropological thinking may be a reason why the study of white supremacy within anthropology has not received much attention. Furthermore, there are also gender-based disparities in the field of anthropology. Whilst, as of 2014, 70% of members of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists were women, they only accounted for 38% of full professorships, and were less likely to gain tenure. Moreover, female anthropologists have not only been paid less historically, but are also more likely to experience harassment in the workplace. These all help to illustrate power dynamics within the field.