(in a “recent comment”:/2008/03/19/new-sm-feature-occasional-contributors/#comment-255038 reader Dylan Kerrigan comented that he thought Savage Minds was too Euro-American. We asked him to write an occasional piece amplifying his thoughts on this matter, and we present it here -R)

Now I’m not the first person to identify a particular anthropological tradition emanating from the ‘West’ that defines what is called ‘anthropology’.

I’m not the first to rant about the dominance of a Euro-American worldview – with its accompanying (selective) modes of funding, disciplinary canon and research areas – that (I believe) pervades anthropology and the discipline uses to ‘construct reality.’

I’m not the only person on SM either to allude to such suggestions – Kerim’s timely abstract for AAA, and peanut’s comments for example both reflect a similar sense to my own.

In the wider published anthro-scape too, authors like Restrepo, Escobar and Ribeiro in particular with their ‘World Anthropology Network’ have written on this problem, its realities and the possibilities of dialogue, for the last 15 years.

In particular they ask how do places not necessarily English-speaking or dominant in the production of anthropological tradition, places like Latin America and the Caribbean, complicate the picture of a hegemonic anthropology that historically comes from the metropolitan centre?

And how can they help to envision an anthropology beyond the modalities, models and conditions already consolidated in Britain, France and the US, and spread throughout the world by the expansion of the Western university system?
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