Page 127 - Prathima Volume 12

A Review of Postcolonial Scholarship: Conducting Research on Culture and Society

Therefore, there are many ways of doing anthropology. Anthropologists have practical
knowledge on human society and are potentially good resources for revising and
reforming anthropological theories and methods. In particular, postcolonial studies
and decolonized social sciences have critically looked at the study of culture and
society. At the beginning of this paper, I pointed out the problems and limitations in the
structural-functionalist theories of social structure and culture. In general,
anthropologists have pointed out a number of issues regarding colonial power,
representations, reflexivity, ethnocentrism, hegemonic epistemology, and many other
attributes in the existing literatures about culture and society. In particular, Moore
(1999) has urged anthropologists to return to theory because of problems with the
development of early anthropology. Indeed, anthropologists have started to
breakdown the boundaries and borrow theories from philosophy and the humanities.
As a result, there is no uniqueness in anthropological theories about culture and society
as anthropologists adopt and incorporate ideas from various disciplines.

In this larger context, contemporary anthropologists have started revising
anthropological practice through the theories of postcolonialism, post-structuralism,
post-modernism, and feminism. Today, anthropological research has become a serious
practice rather than a hobby; for instance, Mahmood (2012) demonstrates religious
misunderstandings causing violence through examples. Thus, the modern world
addresses a variety of crucial issues such as sustainability, climate change,
globalization, spreading of diseases, urban growth, warfare, ethnic conflict, and
disaster management. Anthropologists have identified the crisis of representation,
ethnocentrism, and racism in the classical anthropological studies, but traditional
concepts of anthropology have changed later on. In fact, there are so many new arrivals
in understanding the human society and culture, and different flows with human life
are moving through globalization, transnationalism, diaspora, political economy,
violence, global communication, and diverse cultural identities. As some scholars
point out, the Western model of academic expertise have become only a mode of
knowledge to study culture and society (Mahmood, 2012, p. 4), but there is an
emergence of subaltern traditions forging anthropology; there are new ways of
defining scholarship, multi-talented leaders, teaching students in new ways about
culture and society.

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