Anthropology’s turn to history reframes colonial legacy as a politics-of-knowledge question

Evidence

Some might argue that anthropology’s engagement with history has been less a “turn” than a return to its founding principles, an enquiry into cumulative processes of cultural production but without the typological aspirations and evolutionary assumptions once embraced. Others counter that the feverish turn to history has represented a significant departure, a new kind of rupture with anthropology’s complicity in colonial politics. Both might agree that the move signals a new way of thinking about the politics of knowledge, what a “colonial legacy” means in practice—the categories, conceptual frame, and practices of colonial authorities that have permeated anthropology’s central concerns. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 283

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘colonial legacy’ as categories, conceptual frames, and practices of colonial authority permeating a discipline’s concerns.