Kaiwen Lian

“In knowing we control and in controlling we know”. Michel Foucault, as a French philosopher and anthropologist, explained the complicated relationship between knowledge and power in his book Power/Knowledge. Anthropology is the scientific study of humans, but it was inextricably linked with colonialism until the late 1960s and early 1970s that anthropology critically engaged with its colonial history (Kroll-Zeldin, 2016). Initially, anthropology was a subject dependent on governmental funding for its development, so it must attest to its function to the colonial government. Colonialism and anthropology are a mutually supportive relationship. Although anthropology became a tool for colonists to expand colonial powers and self-justify, it also developed unique methods, practices, and questions under colonialism’s effects. 

With the help and use of colonialism, anthropology first carried out research in colonial territories, thus gradually developed its investigation model. In the 19th century, under the vast expansion of European colonialism, the primary goal of the western governments was to obtain as much information as they could from their colonies. Under such an urge demand, it became more and more necessary to create a discipline that studies the human behavior of others”. Anthropology was such a discipline that developed a specific method, which is called ethnography, to study how those people are different from the western people. By definition, ethnography is a method of “long-term in a field site of study in order to systematically document the everyday lives, behaviors, and interactions of a community of people… is a richly descriptive account of the social life and culture of the group studied.” (Crossman, 2019) It was first developed by one of the most famous anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski in the early 20th century. In his book Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Malinowski critiques some former documents as biased sources because “we are not informed at all by what actual experiences the writers have reached their conclusion”. He expounds that a real scientific-valuable ethnography should be presented “in a manner absolutely candid and above board”. In essence, what Malinowski created is a way of explaining the social structure of “others” by systematic observation of daily life and sustained interactions with indigenous people. After Malinowski published his work, ethnography became the primary method of anthropologists’ fieldwork, which, however, unconsciously be taken advantage of by colonists as a tool to learn about indigenous people and to stabilize colonists’ control over them. Although most anthropologists held the neutral political position when they were doing fieldwork, they seemed to ignore the relationship between themselves and colonial powers. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some anthropologists had worked with the government to politically marginalized indigenous people. According to Buckley’s article on UConn Today in 2011, “Aided by reports from Native informants who agreed to serve as collectors and intermediaries about their culture, anthropologists began collecting indigenous artifacts and information… often had negative consequences on the indigenous cultures.” Buckley claimed that anthropologists were provided access to study indigenous people in exchange for information which would be used by colonial powers to further their control. Under colonialism, western cultural hegemony, which means the social construction of the ruling class will be considered as a universal and practical idea for the benefit of the whole society. It will also unconsciously affect anthropologists to form a method isolating themselves as “absolute objective observers” from the people they observed. Moral or ethical issues are always inevitable between the researchers and the individuals being observed, so a correct view of this issue will have significant benefits in anthropologists’ field investigation.

By observing and reflecting on colonialism, anthropology gradually combines practice with self-censorship. “Colonialism”, the word itself, represents the inequality between colonists and indigenous peoples. In order to self-justify, dividing the world into binary opposition became the primary approach of colonists, thus the way early anthropologists telling stories became influenced under such a social construction which assumed the “west” as a determined end. In other words, if the government divides everything binarily, it would stabilize control over colonies. For example, the colonial government would like to divide or distinguish one or more subjects from others, creating a conflict classification, like the ill or healthy in medication, the guilty or innocent in jurisprudence, or the insane in contrast with rational psychology. Early anthropology under colonialism was such a role for dividing humans into “western” and “others”. In her book, Global Transformations, Michel-Rolph Trouillot admits that “the Savage or the primitive was the alter ego the west constructed for itself. What has not been emphasized enough is that this Other was a Janus, of whom the Savage was only the second face.” The essence of Trouillot’s argument is that the western colonial government constructs the “savage slot” as a self-projection that has a predetermined end. In other words, the west tries to create a teleology which presupposes that history moves along a straight line in which the west is at the end while “others” are at origins. Fortunately, when some anthropologists later started examining the relationship between themselves and governments, they realized that since anthropology is a subject study and analysis of humans, what the “western” is doing, or what the colonial power is doing, should also be part of their study. Through the research about colonialism, modern anthropologists conclude that the way of them to study people was mainly influenced by teleology and formed a particular connection called the “western gaze”. According to modern anthropologists Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins’s view, the western gaze is a special relationship between the west and people be categorized as “others”, which produces a “representation of these others to an audience of non-deviants who thereby acquire a language for understanding themselves and the limits they must live within to avoid categorization with ‘the outside’.” Lutz and Collins’s research shows that displaying “different” or “inferior” individuals to western could help to form an ethnocentrism sense and help colonialism to self-justify. With the help of this self-reflection, anthropologists have developed the focus of practice from ethnocentrism to cultural relativism. Franz Boas, the father of cultural relativism, has said that “There is no fundamental difference in the ways of thinking of primitive and civilized man.” in his book The Mind of Primitive Man preface. He means we should respect every culture instead of evaluating the behavior of other people according to the value criteria of the investigator’s group, and what he proposed has had a tremendous impact on anthropology’s practice. Colonialism gave anthropology a chance to keep rectifying itself. Therefore, while anthropology was used, it also produced new thoughts and self-reflection on its practice to make itself more neutral and more scientific.

With the rise and fall of colonialism, the problems facing anthropology have gradually expanded. Dislike other subjects, anthropology was a highly functional discipline at its birth because it was initially used for colonial aggression and jurisdiction. Such a circumstance shaped anthropology to be thoughtless in the direction it studied, so the only question early anthropology tried to answer is “How are ‘others’ different from us?” By collecting data and information, uncountable excellent research on “Primitive Culture” and “Alien Culture” were produced by anthropology for the colonial government to expand their powers. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by anthropologist Ruth Benedict and Argonauts of the Western Pacific by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski are two great examples of the feature of anthropology under colonialism. The former helped the American government to deal with Japan after the 2nd World War, and the latter had become influential research serving colonial forces. The most significant criticism of “How are ‘others’ different from us?”, just like what we have talked about before, is that it ignores the more extensive colonial system that contains the social and cultural system under the research. It forms such a set of questions standing on a specific western position to ask if the difference exists between indigenes and “western” people. Anthropologist Linda T. Smith also expressed a similar opinion in Decolonizing Methodologies that “Western education precludes us from writing or speaking from a ‘real’ and authentic indigenous position”. In making this comment, Smith urges anthropologists to stand in a different position, not a western or a “civilized” position but in the indigenous angle to ask and answer questions. Essentially, the object of anthropology is the whole human race, so the questions it addressed can never stand in any specific position or angle. As the prominent anthropologist Paul Hiebert puts it, “The questions scholars ask of their data are based in part on their interests and experiences and in part… of questions other scholars in their fields are asking.” The set of questions a discipline asked, always associated with the point of view, the way of looking at things. Thanks to colonialism stressed these problems; modern anthropologists have expanded the scope of their questions into different angles and achieved to look at the others with their own eyes, then look at the other with the other’s eyes, and finally look at themself with the other’s eyes. Only when we study and understand the world of others, we can understand the biases and delusions in our own culture.

In summary, the mutually supportive relationship between anthropology and colonialism endowed anthropology with a particular entangled history at the beginning of its birth. This unique relationship is a double-sword. While colonialism brought pain to indigenous people and superior delusion western people, it also shaped anthropology’s methods with the objection, practices with self-censorship, and questions with a broad expanse of thinking. As we have talked about in the beginning, anthropology should be a subject study human. Thus it should not serve any particular goals or powers. If there must be one, then anthropology’s goal is to benefits humans to make the world inclusive for human differences. Just like what Robbie Vorhaus has said, “Without setbacks and mistakes, no experience. Without experience, no learning.” Because anthropology has experienced the darkness of colonialism, it is so in pursuit of the lightness of humans.

Work Cited

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Crossman, Ashley. “Ethnography: What It Is and How To Do It.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 22 Apr. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/ethnography-definition-3026313.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. “Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Routledge”, 2015.

Christine Buckley “The Impact of Anthropology on Native American Culture.” UConn Today, 24 Aug. 2011, today.uconn.edu/2011/08/the-impact-of-anthropology-on-native-american-culture/#.

Kroll-Zeldin, Oren. “Colonialism” Colonialism – Anthropology – Oxford Bibliographies, 28 June. 2016, www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780 199766567-0139.xml.

Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins, “The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic”, 1991.

Linda, Tuhiwai Smith. “DECOLONIZING METHODOLOGIES: Research and Indigenous Peoples.” 1999.

Hiebert, Paul G. Cultural Anthropology. Baker, 1997.