Decolonizing Anthropology

An Introduction

By: Soumhya Venkatesan

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Paperback | 17 March 2025

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264 Pages

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13.8 x 21.6 x 2.2

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Decolonization has been a buzzword in anthropology for decades. This groundbreaking volume offers not only an anthropology of decolonization, but new ways of thinking about the relationship between anthropology and colonialism, and how we might move beyond colonialism’s troubling legacy, particularly in the metropole.

Soumhya Venkatesan argues that the word ‘decolonization’ is simultaneously too broad and too narrow. In compelling prose, she describes the work already underway and the work still needed – in research, writing and teaching – to extend the horizons of the discipline. She explores a range of concepts including Achille Mbembe’s disenclosure, Cheryl Mattingly’s moral experiments, Miranda Fricker’s epistemic justice, and Gurminder Bhambra’s epistemological justice, and domestication. Throughout, she emphasises the potential of ethnography as a way of both knowing diverse worlds and of being with others in them.

Rich with insights from a range of fields, Decolonizing Anthropology is a go-to book for students and scholars.

Industry Reviews

"A thoughtful, inviting, student-sensitive book that exudes conviviality in knowledge traditions and meaning-making. Venkatesan goes beyond prescriptive abstractions on the need for effective conversational inclusivity in rethinking the colonial logics underpinning anthropological thought and practice. Enthusiastically recommended."
—Francis B. Nyamnjoh, University of Cape Town

"This interrogation of a key moment in anthropological life comes from a practitioner who is also a teacher and learner. Venkatesan's three-year dialogue with students has opened up arguments and questions about decolonization in a surprisingly fresh, accessible and broad ranging way. At once conversational and deeply reflective, her work considers all over again anthropology's conditions of possibility."
—Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

"[A] highly introspective and positioned critique of anthropology as an academic discipline and a sociopolitical practice … [A] call to action for anthropologists to rethink the discipline as a living practice with the potential to shape more than just the future of academia."
—Alicja Staniszewska, Suomen Antropologi

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