RAI2020: Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future.
Panel title: Imperial infrastructures, disciplinary networks: Histories of mobility and knowledge production in Anthropology and Geography
Co-Convenors: Daniele Cantini (daniele.cantini@scm.uni-halle.de) and David Mills (David.mills@education.ox.ac.uk)
Panel Short abstract:
Presentations and comparative discussion of the role that imperial patronage and late-colonial research infrastructures played in shaping academic mobility and disciplinary knowledge practices within Social Anthropology and Human Geography
Panel Long abstract:
The emergence of the academic fields of Geography and Social Anthropology depended on European imperial research infrastructures, even as scholars challenged and critiqued these dependencies and hierarchies. Both disciplines relied on the cultural networks and institutional patronage that enabled students from the colonised territories to study in Europe whilst facilitating large-scale research programmes and fieldwork in colonial settings.
This panel brings together papers that contribute to the growing historical and comparative literature on the way that empires fostered academic mobility (Pietsch 2013) and disciplinary knowledge production in Anthropology and Geography (Mills 2008, Jons 2015).
A particular focus for the panel will be on subaltern and hidden histories of academic practice in the late imperial and early postcolonial period (roughly 1920s -1970s).
Papers are invited on :
- the emergence of postcolonial critique and activism within colonial networks
- the hidden histories and mobilities of individual critics and scholarly activists
- histories of doctoral education and research training in the global South
- the role of the professional associations in lobbying for support and defending academic autonomy
- the training and mobility of colonial administrators by the two fields
- comparative studies of subaltern academic mobility within Anthropology and Geography
- the emergence of new academic models and disciplinary practices within postcolonial worlds