Page 121 - Prathima Volume 12

A Review of Postcolonial Scholarship: Conducting Research on Culture and Society
Harrison (1991) further explored how anthropology will face the New World Order;
the main aim was how to make a successful critical anthropology because the scholars
have realized that there are limitations in radical and critical anthropology. Under
these circumstances, political economy and postmodernism along with a feminist
trajectory have emerged to define critical anthropology. Also, the intellectual,
existential, and political experiences of the Third World people and their works should
be central in the reinvention of critical anthropology projects. In this aspect, she has
emphasized that the anthropologist should focus on the following areas to reinvent
critical anthropology: (1) a neo-Marxist political economy (2) experiments in
interpretive and reflexive ethnographic analysis (3) a feminism which underscores the
impact race and class have upon gender, and traditions of radical Black and (other) (4)
Third World scholarships that acknowledge the interplay between race and other
forms of invidious differences, notably class and gender. Nevertheless, we have to
reconcile the tension between Marxist political economy and interpretive or textualist
approaches. As Fanon (2013) and Harrison (1991) state, we will have to decolonize all
records of interpretation and representation of culture and society.

So far, I have delineated how feminist scholars and feminist anthropologists have
critically looked at the existing anthropological studies and descriptions of the world.
However, they have not just criticized the classical anthropological literature in terms
of these works which are male oriented, but they have critically looked at those
literature in relation to class, gender, race, ethnicity, and caste factors. In order to
reinvent anthropological theory and methods, the contemporary anthropologists
should employ feminist discourse and feminist ethnographic research methods in
anthropology. For instance, Di Leonardo (1991) argued that the early anthropological
research engagement on women related issues in anthropology was more on the
anthropology of women rather than anthropology of gender. Later, many feminist
anthropologists were revisiting the subfields in anthropology and revising them by
paying attention to feminist thought with special reference to women's position and
gender roles. In a similar manner, Hill Collins (2000) more specifically focused on the
role of the Black women's experiences and ideas. In effect, she has produced her
analysis by assembling the different theoretical traditions of Afrocentric philosophy,
Marxism, critical theory, sociology of knowledge, and postmodernism. Hill Collin's
(2000) primary claim was that Black women have created knowledge which is not
adequately recognized. Ultimately, it indicates the power of knowledge relations
between the dominant group and the suppressed group. Black women are also
involved in activism against this suppression and subordination. In this circumstance,
how we understand black feminist thought because of the epistemological importance
of black feminist thought is neglected and undermined in terms of class, race, and
gender differences.

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