Studying Anthropology

The Thoughts and Insecurities of an Anthropology Student

Text by Maria Kristina Kravanja (Freie Universität Berlin)

Art by Maria Kristina Kravanja

This essay is committed to reflect on my very own questions and feelings about decolonizing anthropology as a white anthropology student. The aim is to address ethical difficulties and thereby acknowledging them as important problems in anthropology. To do so, I first elaborate on the concept of multiple jeopardies (Cooper 2016), which allows an understanding of how privilege and disadvantages work. With this concept in mind, I than continue to argue that our own disadvantages in life do not justify any morally questionable actions, like a white person researching in a country mostly populated by POC. Further I consider approaches of other anthropologists who try to deal with this moral balancing act. Which altogether do not appear to make things any clearer. My result is the acknowledgment of disappointment in me, my studies and anthropology as a whole. Yet I argue leaving anthropology is not an option, since it would be just another jump to innocence, which does not solve any of the mentioned problems. I choose to end the essay on a presumably ‘bad note’ and the final thought of having to stay uncomfortable with my own privilege and therefore constantly being reminded of having to do better.

Studying Anthropology in a prestigious university like the Freie Universität Berlin is a big deal for me. I never thought I would make it this far, considering my socialization in an environment that first consisted of the lower middle class and was later defined by downward mobility. At the time, my life perspective was to work off the books in the cleaning sector, or maybe stock shelves in a local supermarket, in addition to caring for my handicapped brother. Admittedly, I falsely assumed that the hardest part would be getting into the social position of a student with a bright future, which is where I find myself now: I work and study at a prestigious university known by the world. However hard the upward mobility was, immediately after it began, I found myself in ethical conflict with myself, which I could not shake off with hard work or any other neoliberal ideas of becoming the best version of myself: How am I supposed to study and research as a white anthropologist, born and raised in Austria, without upholding white supremacy and a global power structure, which suppresses BIPoC using direct structural and epistemic violence? In the seminar ‘Decolonize Classrooms’, we shared our views on imperialist structures and concepts in the world of teaching and learning, and how to overcome them. Thereby we focused mainly on schools and topics like childhood. Considering my awareness of and struggle with decolonization that started in university, I commit this essay to my own questions and feelings about decolonizing anthropology. Naturally, I will talk from the perspective of a student, thus I will reflect on studying as a white queer student in a German university and the first steps into fieldwork and research.

Brittney Cooper (2016) summarizes Frances Beale’s (2008) concept of double jeopardy and Beverly Lindsay’s (1979) idea of triple jeopardy, which both describe the overlapping nature of different forms of oppression. Beale (2008) introduced the concept of double jeopardy, highlighting how Black women face both racial and gender-based oppression. Lindsay (1979) expanded this to triple jeopardy, adding classism as a third dimension, arguing that Black women can experience compounded effects from racism, sexism, and classism simultaneously. However, Deborah King (1988) develops this discussion further by challenging the notion that these forms of oppression can simply be added up or piled on top of each other. Instead of viewing racism, sexism, and classism as cumulative, King argues that they are distinct but interconnected systems of control that interact with one another in more complex ways. For King, oppression doesn’t form a stack where more layers mean greater oppression. Rather, these systems function differently depending on the context and cannot be measured in terms of more or less. King opposes the additive nature of the double and triple jeopardy approaches and coins the term multiple jeopardies, acknowledging the interdependency of the different control systems. Not only are they multiple in the sense of several and simultaneous oppressions, but also in their relationships to each other (Cooper 2016:5). So, what does that mean for me? My class background and whiteness cannot simply be added up or subtracted from one another. Depending on the situation, my identity as a queer woman may carry more weight than any privilege associated with my race or disadvantage linked to my class. Depending on the context, my whiteness will grant me access to resources denied to other in specific moments, my class background will make things which are very achievable to others impossible for me. Therefore, we see that every participation in social life is a constant balancing act of our own discriminations and privileges in our unjust world. This is far from acceptable, and I do not want it to be normalized and downplayed by speaking about it in a rational manner and therefore taking away the shocking momentum, which it should have. The point I am making is that my class background and feeling like an outcast in academia don't erase the privileges and advantages I have as a white, European person. No matter my background or how much of an outcast I feel in academia, this will never 'outweigh' the experience of a POC participating in academia. Not only saying this, but really allowing myself to feel the impact of this fact humbles and disillusions me. I am left with the question: where to go from here?

On the 1st of December 2022 I will begin my research in Jamaica about queer visibility in the context of a formerly colonised country in a postcolonial world. Granted that my interest in the field is about making queer and therefore marginalized perspectives visible, I will still be another white anthropologist in a country with mostly POC-citizens. Given the previously made argument, me being queer in a homophobic country obviously neither gives me insight in the experiences of POC, nor makes me equally disadvantaged. Acknowledging this is important but not enough, so what to do with that?

In an attempt to approach these questions, I am turning to other anthropologists, hoping to find answers. Girish Daswani (2021) elaborates on why anthropologists leave the country they are living in, in order to do their research in the first place. Indigenous anthropologists, who research their own communities, as well as anthropologist who do research in Europe or North America, according to Daswani (2021), are getting less acknowledgement than those who leave for non-Western countries. Daswani (2021) speaks out about their own experience when describing colleagues who “didn’t meet the geographical need of the departments” and therefore, are not getting the jobs they are applying for, despite having done great research and gotten successfully published. Research about issues like racism in Europe and North America gets less attention because it is seen as less geographically appealing. During my time as a student, I internalize the idea of having to do research abroad. I do want to have a job in academia after graduating, especially after all the work it took me to get into the position of being able to apply for these jobs. I do not want to be at risk of not being employed just because I picked the wrong place to research in.

However, researching in the Global South and doing nothing at all against the colonial aspect of this is not right either. I aspire to confine my negative impact in the machine called academia and wonder: can I go abroad and not further enable the colonial aspect of anthropology? Daswani (2021) criticises the fact that us anthropologists often enter communities, center our research around the ‘damage’ it does to that community and then leave it again. Furthermore, asking ourselves who we cite and why, who gets a platform in our papers and who does not. Takami Delisle (2019) outlines various authors ‘approaches to confining the negative impact of research to POC, such as “storytelling as a decolonial research methodology”, as well as building “solidarity and collaboration … across disciplines and nation-state borders to refuse and transform existing hierarchies of knowledge and practice“ (Delisle, 79). Andrew Sanchez (2021) sees the practical implementation undertaken by the current ‘decolonize the curriculum’-movement creating the base for researching in a decolonial manner. This does not repeat known old debates but sees the responsibility in finding new ways of engaging with the old canons of the field (Sanchez 2021:4). Peter Pels (2018) takes quite a different approach to finding a solution to the issue of decolonizing anthropology. They argue against decolonizing anthropology, because they think four core points will be forgotten by doing so: 1) anthropology’s history of claiming racism is a scientific objective classification. 2) The foundation of ethnography being built on the colonial concept of classifying ‘the native’s point of view’. 3) It being impossible to finalize the process of decolonizing. 4) Anthropology claiming expertise as well as knowledge ‘above the native’ (Pels 2018:71–75). Although I agree on the point of not forgetting, erasing, and losing ourselves in the illusion of an innocent anthropology, their essay lacks the practical implementation of its intent, since there is no practical suggestion to it. The selection of approaches, tools, and questions to reflect upon gives me the feeling I am not alone in this. I ask myself if this is enough.

Most of my thoughts in this essay ended with a question and not with an answer. That reflects my emotions towards this topic quite well. I assume the option most consistently aligning with my moral standards would be to quit anthropology altogether. But wouldn’t that be what Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang (2012) call a ‘move to innocence’? Simply leaving every morally and ethically challenging field does not improve its moral dilemmas, but results in not dealing with challenges of our time, we simply just take a step away and move into innocence in order to not concern ourselves with the problems. So, I am not quitting. But my research must be a collaboration with my interviewees and include as many of the above-mentioned tools to decolonize my methodology as far as possible. But these are no relieving thoughts. Although I am going to try my best to decolonize my research, I forbid myself to end this essay in release of the tension all these questions awoke. Perhaps the most powerful thing I can do is to let this essay end on a presumably ‘bad note’. The painful awareness of my struggle with my own privilege ends in nothing but uncomfortable consternation as well as embarrassment. I remain in an uncomfortable position and let it remind me that I will have to constantly reflect on my privilege and step out of my passivity in order to be part of the change we need in this world.

References

Beal, Frances M. 2008. “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.” Meridians 8, no. 2: 166–176. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40338758.

Cooper, Brittney. 2016. “Intersectionality.” In The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, edited by Lisa Disch, and Mary Hawkesworth, 39-60. Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.013.2.

Daswani, Girish. 2021. “The (Im)Possibility of Decolonizing Anthropology.” https://everydayorientalism.wordpress.com/2021/11/18/the-impossibility-of-decolonizing-anthropology/ (accessed July 3, 2022).

Delisle, Takami S. 2019. “Review of Decolonizing the University, edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial, and Kerem Nişancıoğlu.” Teaching and Learning Anthropology 2, no. 2.

King, Deborah K. 1988. “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology.” Dartmouth Scholarship Faculty Work. 2073. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/2073.

Lindsay, Beverly. 1979. “Minority Women in America: Black American, Native American, Chicana, and Asian American Women.” In The Study of Woman: Enlarging Perspectives of Social Reality, edited by Eloise C. Snyder, 318-63. New York: Harper & Row.

Pels, Peter. 2018. “Anthropology Should Never Be Fully Decolonized.” Etnofoor 30, no. 2: 71–76. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26543129.

Sanchez, Andrew. 2021. The Colour of Anthropology. Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.85811.

Tuck, Eve and K. Wayne Yang. 2012. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1.