18 May 2018
This year’s annual Anthropology Day will be about ‘Anthropology in Troubled Times’ and will be held in Museum Volkenkunde. We take our lead from Paul Stoller’s (Paul Stoller, Doing Anthropology in Troubled Times) recent call for an engaged anthropology, and ask how anthropology deals with and positions itself with respect to the social challenges and heated political debates our world is facing today. How does anthropology relate to anti-racist activism and racist responses, challenges to white privilege and colonial histories, critical issues like refugee rights and environmental crisis, but also a significant swing to the right that resonates in our classrooms? To what extent do these challenges shape the discipline and in what ways should anthropologists reflect on this influence?
We will come together in the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden to share and discuss insights in order to explore anthropology’s positioning and chart desirable paths for anthropology in these troubled times. Besides a thought provoking keynote lecture, we are planning a panel discussion on the need to decolonize anthropology, a workshop on diversity in the classroom, and we will ask whether the anthropological canon is largely made up of dead white men.