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  • Evolution of the Anthropologies of the South:Contributions of Three Mexican Anthropologists in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century
  • Esteban Krotz (bio)

What Are the "Anthropologies of the South"?

Often the existence of "anthropologies of the South" becomes visible through an experience completely nonexistent in the origins of anthropological science and only weakly emergent in some places during the first century of the discipline's life.1 This is the experience of anthropologists coming from the countries where anthropology originated, who now find themselves in many of the regions about which the classic monographs were written, no longer solely with "natives" or "key informants," but increasingly with "native colleagues," with departments of anthropology and research centers, with specialized journals and bulletins, with guild organizations, and with anthropological congresses.

We are thus approaching a milestone in the evolution of anthropological science, which has not yet been sufficiently acknowledged and analyzed. The habitual manner of approaching the history of the discipline as a sequence of "schools" or "paradigms" likely contributed considerably to hiding the newness of the situation. If instead it were the case of a combination of an "internalist" approach with an "externalist" one, which takes into account both world wars, the decolonization of the fifties and the sixties and the end of the Cold War in the late eighties as decisive events for the sociocultural configurations of our world (of which the diverse anthropological traditions form integral parts), this situation would be quite evident.2

Other reasons for this invisibility are easily confirmed by a thorough review of the usual handbooks and histories as well as the programs of academic courses and curricular plans of anthropological studies—incidentally, in both the "north" and in the "south." One reason could be that in many cases the emergence of an anthropology of the South was very much linked to one of the anthropologies of the North developed in a certain country for which a specific country in the South was the traditionally favored space for fieldwork. It is easy to understand that by virtue [End Page 1] of this relationship, frequently the first Native specialists would obtain their academic education in some university of the Northern country from which the first anthropological researchers had arrived and, consequently, reproduce—or seem to reproduce—more or less exactly that familiar anthropology. Another reason might be the not-uncommon eagerness of members of emerging anthropological communities in the South to seek out their scientific legitimization, above all, through repetition of certain academic practices observed in the North. These and other reasons should, of course, be seen within the framework of a general socio-cultural hegemony in which the countries that gave rise to anthropology continue to play a decisive role, wherein not even in the scientific fields is there expedient allowance for the inclusion of newcomers who soon could become rivals, and where sometimes complicated networks of exchange, collaboration, and competition are set up. Even so, such a situation does not always fail to have facets that are somewhat surprising, as is depicted in cases such as Mexico, where the beginnings of professional anthropology are almost contemporary with those of several countries that originated the discipline; or Brazil, whose anthropological community has become much larger than that of the Portuguese or even that of the entire Iberian Peninsula.

It must be acknowledged that the concept of "Anthropologies of the South" is ambiguous and may generate misunderstandings. For that reason, it should be pointed out that here, "South" is to be understood in the first place as a socioeconomic and political-cultural reference and only secondly as one of the demo-geographical type. Nevertheless, in spite of the purported deterritorialization proclaimed by several globalization theories, one cannot seriously doubt the existence of some large population segments and collectivities situated primarily in the Southern Hemisphere and decisively marked by a situation of dependence and by particularly manifest and crude mechanisms of exploitation and domination as well as ethno-racial, cultural, gender, and even religious discrimination. By contrast, the term "North" identifies population segments and collectivities that are structurally dominant, the main beneficiaries of the existing exploitation and domination, and tending to be freer from the cruder...

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