They Are Not Your Tribe

By Anonymous

One of my undergraduate professors complained about how her professor in the United States kept referring to his research subjects as “my tribe”: “They are not YOUR tribe!” she yelled in frustration. Indeed, any tribe is not that of the researcher just because they agreed to become the informants

The anthropology I learned during my undergraduate studies in my Northeast Asian home country focused on redefining the discipline. My professors wanted to reclaim the discipline from its persistent whiteness and Euro-/North-American-centrism of anthropological knowledge production. They criticized how European and North American scholars are still the main voices. We unapologetically turned the typical picture of anthropology—where a bunch of white scholars travel to “faraway” places such as Samoa, Papua New Guinea, or South American or Asian countries—into one where Asian students decolonize academia by studying their own local communities, towns, countries, and tribes in a rebellious manner.

Then I moved to Europe to study anthropology for my postgraduate degree. I did not expect to be lectured here that E. E. Evans-Pritchard was “a great academic and classic,” not being told of his problematic views of his informants. A colleague ranted, “For how much longer do we have to criticize Malinowski?” Yet, I never heard a passionate professor here criticize Malinowski in depth. The harshest criticism against Malinowski I heard in class was “although he is criticized, he was great and progressive for that time.”

I am so done with professors who emphasize how so-called classic anthropologists were progressive in their time. How does it do any good when it comes to the rights of students to learn a fuller picture of these early anthropologists to hear about this legacy if it also contained good old racism from a colonial perspective? Criticizing does not mean boycotting. Why are the professors so defensive?

I am so done with people getting way too used to the problematic fact that “founding figures” of anthropology were white men studying “exotic” people from “faraway” lands.      

I am so done with revering Hortense Powdermaker for doing the first anthropology at home; I thought it was something normal, not to be praised.

I am so done with anthropologists using their excellent academic skills to stay apolitical, hiding behind pedantic sentences to avoid acknowledging how global academic, economic, and racial inequalities affect anthropological knowledge production. If a school in Tibet had the same amount of money and the same network as Harvard or Oxford or the University of Amsterdam, wouldn’t anthropology look completely different? Colonialism and imperialism do not have clear-cut ends, as if the present is immune from the past. Indigenous people are still being excluded, exploited, and colonized, along with peoples of color suffering from racism in Europe.

I am so done with anthropologists erasing “politics” in classroom discussions, rendering the trait of “apolitical” the ultimate sign of an academic. Be aware of prevalent abstract academic language that questions if activism is necessary in anthropology or if cultural appropriation is a real thing or if we are going too far with this criticism about the Eurocentrism of the discipline.

I am so done with professors acting confused about how they should define the “Western” while what they really want is to question if the West is really dominant.

I am so done with anthropologists believing that POC communities and Indigenous people mechanically vilify white people for exoticizing POC or Indigenous people without fully examining the historical political, economic, and social context of the exploitation and power inequalities.

I am so done with anthropologists who depend on their informants yet are reluctant to include informants’ dissenting voices about their descriptions of them.

I am so done with anthropologists who refuse to help their informants who get in trouble for helping the anthropologist because “the researcher should always distance themselves from their informants.”

The photo was taken by me in the middle of a vibrant building forest in the capital city in Northeast Asia where I was born and raised. In the photo, on the left there are three tall glass buildings with some light on, although it was past =work time. On the right, there are also three tall glass buildings: one with glamorous golden lights, another with green lights, and the last one in chic, black design with a high roof. While the sky is dark, the buildings never cease to shine.