Anthropology Colloquium is the department’s speaker series that invites a mixture of anthropologists from within and outside of UBC to present their research. This speaker series is scheduled throughout the academic year, typically with a lunch reception in the AnSo Lounge.
The State’s Own Anthropology: Comparative Cases from California and Palestine
Thursday March 24, 2016
Anthropology and Sociology Building (ANSO) 134
11:30 – 1:30 pm
Event Poster: PDF
Dr. Les Field
Les Field is a Professor of Anthropology at University of New Mexico
Abstract
In this paper I am concerned to speak as specifically and illustratively as possible about certain instances of the complex relationship between anthropological scholarship and the formation of state policies. In what ways is anthropological scholarship deployed in the development of government policy? Is the production of knowledge deployed in the exercise of a state’s governmentality with respect to indigenous peoples in fact distinct from anthropological knowledge? Using case-studies from my work in California and Palestine, I elaborate these themes and question and show how in these instances states deploy policies that rely upon anthropological framework and epistemologies both with and without the complicity of anthropologist themselves.
Bio
Les Field is a Professor of Anthropology at University of New Mexico and author of Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of California Indian Sovereignty and Identity and The Grimace of Macho Ratón: Artisans, Identity and Nation in Late Twentieth Century Western Nicaragua.
