Blowing up “the World” in World Anthropologies

Anthropologies of Our Caribbean Sea of (Is)lands

“…This year, we celebrate the fifteenth year anniversary of JLACA ’s name change from JLAA to the present title, thus marking the official inclusion of the Caribbean within its purview. As Guest Editors for this In‐Focus Issue on Caribbean Anthropology, or rather the plural Caribbean Anthropologies (Papailias and Gupta 2021; Valladares and Igreja 2021), we are pleased to inaugurate this collection of scholarly works with this Introduction. The concept for this issue was the brainchild of Quetzil Castañeda, JLACA Editor‐in‐Chief from 2018 to 2022.…”

A poetics of living rebellion: Sociocultural anthropology in 2021

“…The authors remind us that these fraught power relations also pinpoint “multiple concerns to be folded into one another” and provocatively ask, “To what extent, in fact, is what is going on in ‘American anthropology’—whether it is in crisis or burning—of little concern in these other contexts, especially when there are pressing local social and political issues demanding anthropological intervention?” And we would ask if the intervention of anthropology is indeed demanded. In this moment in which the continuity of anthropology is troubled, Papailias and Gupta (2021, 4) remind us to ask, unsettle, and name “the unnamed master subject” of a provincialized US anthropology, as evidenced in uneven academic terrain “between local and global, language politics and academic gatekeeping, including and beyond citational politics.”…”

“…Penelope Papailias and Pamila Gupta (2021, 1) write an introduction piece to the World Anthropologies section as its incoming editors, probing the conceptual dimensions of the “world”—and the “worlding (as an active verb) of anthropology.” Poignantly, they ask us to consider more deeply the global political, economic, and social seismic shifts that not only consider the place of anthropology but also interrogate the ground upon which critiques against the discipline may assume a “singular ‘American’ anthropology without always acknowledging the specificity of this ‘politics of location’” (Al‐Bulushi, Ghosh, and Tahir 2021; cited in Papailias and Gupta 2021). Their critique of the politics of academia—of whose voices are amplified and of how Euro‐Western epistemologies and knowledge production retain their position—remains salient, echoing the “turn to decolonization” and critiques of citational politics that efface Black, Indigenous, and other people of color as central to anxieties regarding the collapsing of the discipline.…”

China in and out of World Anthropologies: Epistemic Politics Amidst Historical Ironies and Contemporary Realities

“…This effort echoes what Mignolo (2010, p. 111) calls "de-colonial cosmopolitanism," which is a "cosmopolitanism of multiple trajectories aiming at a trans-modern world based on pluriversality rather than on a new and good universal for all." In 2015, the flagship journal American Anthropologist launched a section on "world anthropologies," dedicated to examining the histories, voices, and differences in anthropological knowledge, and its production (Papailias & Gupta, 2021).…”

“…Other than fleshing out what “world anthropologies” should look like by revisiting anthropology in Asian and Latin American countries, many chapters of the book brought power in postcolonial conditions to the fore in understanding knowledge production (Bošković, 2007; Kuwayama, 2004; Mathews, 2016). This effort echoes what Mignolo (2010, p. 111) calls “de-colonial cosmopolitanism,” which is a “cosmopolitanism of multiple trajectories aiming at a trans-modern world based on pluriversality rather than on a new and good universal for all.” In 2015, the flagship journal American Anthropologist launched a section on “world anthropologies,” dedicated to examining the histories, voices, and differences in anthropological knowledge, and its production (Papailias & Gupta, 2021).…”