History of Anthropology

The History of Anthropology Working Group is an outgrowth of the History of Anthropology Review. Originally called the History of Anthropology Newsletter, HAR has been a nerve center for the history of anthropology for over forty years. In 2014, our editorial collective brought the newsletter into the digital age, redesigning it as an open access website with new sections and features. Over the six years since HAR’s relaunch we’ve seen the field of history of anthropology expand beyond an earlier focus on classic texts and figures to incorporate global traditions of anthropology, approaches from Indigenous Studies, STS and the History of Science, museology, library and information science, and the politics of collecting and displaying cultures. The history of studying the world’s cultures, ways of life, and systems of knowledge is vitally important as a means to address current issues, where increasing global connections do not erase significant differences.  
 
HAR’s editors sought a forum in which to discuss and develop the issues that drive the journal beyond what is there on the site; we’re grateful to CHSTM for providing that space. This Working Group is open to anyone who wants to reflect on the histories of anthropology—anthropologists, historians, interested others.  
 
This year’s series of readings focuses on anthropology’s many connections to race, racism, anti-racism, the anthropology of policing, white supremacy, and authoritarianism. They were chosen as a response to the Black Lives Matter protests and a strong wish to interrogate the field’s past, present, and future. We have sought to combine very contemporary ethnography with more historically-oriented work. The history of anthropology has become a lively object (and target) for reflection on how to confront centuries of imperial violence and racism-- legacies clearly still alive with the open return of white supremacy with the Trump presidency and other resurgent ethno-nationalisms, but also, as many critiques have made clear, built into the fabric of Western societies. 
 
Anthropology’s extreme relevance to these current issues is a result of the field’s intrinsic ambiguities: it has been a tool of colonialism and a key field for the development of scientific racism, as well as the central site for a scientific rebuttal of racism, and a space for romantic and utopian aspirations of all kinds. This year’s discussions, led by members of HAR’s editorial collective and open to all, seek to explore these ambiguities and aim to rethink the past of anthropology in order to contemplate its future.