Decolonizing Decoloniality

DECOLONIZING DECOLONIALITY:
A VIEW FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD

We hear calls from around the world to decolonize, diversify, and decenter knowledge production and dissemination. But what does this really mean in different contexts, who is participating, and whose interests are served?  For the last two years, the GDC has been hosting a series of community-wide conversations about Decolonizing Decoloniality.  So far, scholars from Mexico, Indonesia, Taiwan, Mozambique and Angola, and Argentina have shared their experiences and practices. See the playlist of our previous conversations.

Upcoming conversation

Stay tuned for more information on future conversations.

Previous conversations

Mexico – Federico Besserer (Professor of Anthropology, Autonomous Metropolitan University) and Dahil Melgar (Chief Curator, National Museum of Cultures of the World), facilitated by Peggy Levitt (Mildred Lane Kemper Chair of Sociology, Wellesley College). Recording available in Spanish (with English subtitles).

Indonesia – Sita Hidaya (Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta) and Judith Schlehe (Professor in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Freiburg), facilitated by Sanderien Verstappen (University of Vienna, Austria). Recording available in English.

Taiwan – Prof. Hongzen Wang (Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Director of the Austronesian Studies Center, and the Dean of Si Wang College at National Sun Yat-Sen University) facilitated by Ken Chih-Yan Sun, (Associate Professor at Villanova University). Recording unavailable. In English.

Mozambique and Angola – Ines Raimundo (Eduardo Mondiane University in Mozambique), Prof. Higino Lombe (Auxiliary Prof at the University of Culto Cuanavale In Angola), and Prof. Isaías Falau (Assistant Professor at the Superior Institute of Social Sciences and International Relations in Angola), facilitated by Alvaro Lima, Research Director at the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Recording available in Portuguese and English (with subtitles).

Argentina – Máximo Badaró and Silvina Merenson (EIDAES UNSAM/CONICET), facilitated by Patricia Lepratti (IDES-UNGS), Luciana Denardi (UNSAM/CONICET), and Ezequiel Saferstein (UNSAM/CONICET). Recording available in Spanish (with English subtitles).

Participant bios

Silvina Merenson is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina), and Professor of Social Anthropology at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM, Argentina). She works in the interfaces between History, Anthropology and Political Science. She has conducted fieldwork in Argentina, Uruguay and USA. Her current research, initiated in 2019, is about Class Self-Ascription in the North and South of the Bonaerense Conurban (Argentina). On her more recent publications are a political ethnography about the history of networks and transnational displacements of the Broad Front (Frente Amplio) of Uruguay in Argentina.

Máximo Badaró is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina), and Professor of Social Anthropology at the Universidad Nacional de San Martin (UNSAM, Argentina). He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS-Paris). He has conducted fieldwork at the armed forces in Argentina, the WTO in Geneva, and marketing agencies and commercial intermediaries in China. He is specialized in political anthropology of institutions, elites and China-Latin America relations. He published numerous articles in academic journals and four books: Militares o ciudadanos. La formación de los oficiales del ejército argentino (Prometeo, 2009); Historias del ejército argentino. 1990-2010. Democracia, política y sociedad (Edhasa, 2013); Los encantos del poder. Desafíos de la antropología política (with Marc Abélès, Siglo XXI, 2015); China in Argentina: Ethnographies of a Global Expansión (Palgrave, 2021).