Revisiting Positionality in Critical Anthropology: From Radical Roots to the Challenges of Neoliberal Academia

Songin-Mokrzan, Marta

doi:0137-4079

- ris
- BibTeX
- EndNote
- Csv

Revisiting Positionality in Critical Anthropology: From Radical Roots to the Challenges of Neoliberal Academia Songin-Mokrzan, Marta

Object structure

Revisiting Positionality in Critical Anthropology: From Radical Roots to the Challenges of Neoliberal Academia

Songin-Mokrzan, Marta

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences

critical anthropology ; radical anthropology ; positionality ; reflexivity ; neoliberalism

Within the field of critical anthropology, the scope of the reflection goes beyond one’s own society, encompassing a thorough exploration of anthropologists themselves as complex products of their socio-cultural environments. This aspect is becoming increasingly important in today’s critical analysis of the status of anthropology. Drawing on the insights of radical anthropologists, this article explores the economic and political context that shapes anthropological practice. While radical critics of the 1970s were confronted with well-defined sources of authority, the rise of neoliberalism disperses power and complicates the pursuit of critical anthropology. The question remains: Can critical anthropology maintain its potency amidst the influences it seeks to challenge? This question resonates as a central introspective point for contemporary critical anthropologists, inviting them to navigate the complex web of power, subjectivity, and socio-political context in their pursuit of transformative scholarship.

Abu Lughod, Lila. 1991. “Writing Against Culture.” In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, edited by Richard G. Fox, 137–162. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Asad, Talal. 1973. “Introduction.” In Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, edited by Talal Asad, 9–19. London: Ithaca Press.
Ardener, Edwin. 1975. “The Problem Revisited.” In Perceiving Women, edited by Shirley Ardener, 19–27. London: Dent.
Armbruster, Heidi. 2008. “Introduction. The Ethics of Taking Sides.” In Taking Sides: Ethics, Politics and Fieldwork in Anthropology, edited by Heidi Armbruster and Anna Lærke, 1–22. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Barber Gardiner, Pauline, Leach, Belinda, Lem, Winnie. 2012. “Introduction: Confronting Anthropology: The Critical Enquiry of Capitalism.” In Confronting Capital: Critique and Engagement in Anthropology, edited by Pauline Gardiner Barber, Belinda Leach, and Winnie Lem, 1–14. New York, London: Routledge.
Brreman, Gerald D. 1968: “Is Anthropology Alive? Social Responsibility in Social Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 9 (5): 391–96.
Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus. 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Collier, Stephen. 2011. Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff John L. 2000. “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming.” Public Culture 12 (2): 291–343.
Diamond, Stanley. 1964. “A Revolutionary Discipline.” Current Anthropology 5 (5): 432–437.
Ferguson, James. 2015. Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Galtung, Johan. 1967. “Scientific Colonialism.” Transition 30: 11–15.
Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gough, Kathleen. 1968. “The New Proposals for Anthropologists.” Current Anthropology 9 (5): 403–407.
Hage, Ghassan. 2012. “Critical Anthropological Thought and The Radical Political Imaginary Today.” Critique of Anthropology 32 (3): 285–308.
Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575–599.
Harding, Sandra. 1987. Feminism and Methodology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Harding, Sandra. 1993. “Rethinking Standpoint Methodology: What is Strong ‘Objectivity’?” In: Feminist Epistemologies, edited by Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, 49–82. New York and London: Routledge.
Hartsock, Nancy. 1997. “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism.” In: Feminist Social Thought, edited by Diana T. Meyers, 461–483. London and New York: Routledge.
Hilgers, Mathieu. 2011. “The Three Anthropological Approaches to Neoliberalism.” International Social Science Journal 61: 351–364.
Hymes, Dell. 1972. “Introduction: The Uses of Anthropology: Critical, Political, Personal.” In: Reinventing Anthropology, edited by Dell Hymes, 3-79. New York: Random House.
Huizer, Geritt. 1979. “Anthropology and Politics: From Naiveté Toward Liberation.” In: The Politics of Anthropology. From Colonialism and Sexism Toward a View from Below, edited by Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim. The Hague: Mouton.
Jones J. Delmos. 1970. “Toward a Native Anthropology.” Human Organization 29 (4): 251–258.
Kipnis, Andrew B. 2008. “Audit cultures: Neoliberal governmentality, socialist legacy, or technologies of governing?” American Ethnologist 35 (2): 275–289.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 2011. L’Anthropologie face aux problèmes du monde moderne. Paris: Seuil.
Lordon, Frédéric. 2010. Capitalisme, désir et servitude: Marx et Spinoza. Paris: La fabrique éditions.
Malinowski, Bronisław. 1938. “A Nation-Wide Intelligence Service.” In First Year’s Work: 1937/1938 by Mass-Observation, edited by Charles Madge and Tom Harrison, 83–121. London: Lindsay Drummond.
Malinowski, Bronisław. 1945. The Dynamics of Culture Change: An Inquiry into Race Relations in Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Mokrzan, Michał. 2019. Klasa, kapitał i coaching w dobie późnego kapitalizmu. Perswazja neoliberalnego urządzania. Toruń: Wydawnictwo UMK.
Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Ong, Aihwa. 2007. “Boundary Crossings: Neoliberalism as a Mobile Technology.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32 (1): 3-8.
Rose, Nikolas. 1996. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shore, Cris, and Susan Wright. 2000. “Coercive Accountability: The Rise of Audit Culture in Higher Education.” In Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy, edited by Marilyn Strathern, 57-89. London: Routledge.
Scholte, Bob. 1972. “Toward a Reflexive and Critical Anthropology.” In Reinventing Anthropology, edited by Dell Hymes, New York: Random House.
Songin-Mokrzan, Marta. 2014. Zwrot ku zaangażowaniu. Strategie konstruowania nowej tożsamości antropologii. Polskie Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze Wrocław-Łódź.
Songin-Mokrzan, Marta, and Mokrzan, Michał. 2020. “Efekt ślepej plamki. Antropologia krytyczna wobec neoliberalizmu.” Kultura i Społeczeństwo 64 (2): 119–137.
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. 1971. “Decolonializing Applied Social Sciences.” Human Organisation 30 (4): 333–357.
Thedvall, Renita. 2017. “Meeting to Improve Lean[ing] Swedish Public Preschool.” In Meeting Ethnography: Meetings as Key Technologies of Contemporary Governance, Development, and Resistance, edited by Jen Sandler and Renita Thedvall, New York: Routledge.
Tyler, Stephen. The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue, and Rhetoric in the Postmodern World. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Van Maanen, John. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.