Decolonizing Disciplines
Deborah Thomas’s introduction for the September 2018 issue.
"We remain a predominantly white field, despite the epistemological and methodological transformations that have been prompted by a very small minority of scholars and their allies over the last thirty years. It would seem that our own decolonization is woefully incomplete. There are, of course, many reasons for this, including the stubborn persistence of some of the epistemological binaries Lars Rodseth explores in his essay in this issue. But these numbers should prompt us to revisit the systems we have in place to attract diverse student populations to our classes, to recruit anthropology majors and graduate students, to mentor scholars of color in our departments, and to find ways to popularize (and in some cases transform and make meaningful) the field of anthropology among high school students and the various publics with which we are engaged. Anthropology as a field has both solidified racial and “civilizational” hierarchies (here, I am thinking of the nineteenth-century proponents of Social Darwinism, some of whom worked in my own department) and worked to unseat them (here, of course, I am referring to our Boasian legacy). What tack will we take moving forward?"
The rest of the introduction, as well as past “From the Editor” introductions, is free to access on AnthroSource.