Knowra Colonial anthropology Colonial anthropology Colonial anthropology is anthropological research conducted within colonial systems of power, often shaped by imperial institutions, unequal relationships, and administrative needs.
Salvage anthropology : An approach that records cultural practices believed to be disappearing, often under colonial conditions. Its urgency to preserve cultures could document them while treating colonial disruption as inevitable.
British Empire : A worldwide system of territories governed or controlled by Britain from the sixteenth century into the twentieth. British imperial expansion created institutions and field settings for much early anthropology.
Franz Boas : An anthropologist who rejected racial determinism and argued that cultures must be understood through their particular histories. His historical particularism challenged evolutionary rankings common in colonial-era scholarship.
Decolonial anthropology : An approach that challenges colonial power in anthropology's concepts, institutions, research practices, and knowledge claims. It explicitly seeks to transform the colonial relations this concept describes.
Ethnographic museum : A museum that collects and interprets objects associated with particular peoples and cultures. Colonial collecting shaped many collections and continues to raise questions of ownership and interpretation.
Ethnographic survey : A systematic collection of information about a population's customs, social organization, and beliefs. Colonial administrations used surveys to make populations legible for governance.
Royal Anthropological Institute : A British learned society founded in 1871 to advance the study of humankind. Its predecessors connected anthropological scholarship to imperial networks and colonial information.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard : A British social anthropologist known for studies of the Nuer and Azande in Sudan. His research among colonized communities became central to debates about ethnography and colonial context.
Indigenous anthropology : Anthropological work grounded in Indigenous scholars' perspectives, responsibilities, and intellectual traditions. It contests colonial research arrangements that position Indigenous people only as objects of study.
Repatriation : The return of cultural objects, human remains, or other heritage to their communities or countries of origin. Claims for return often address collections assembled through colonial power.
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