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Decentering Anthropology by Way of Malinowski: Critical Perspectives on Power, Place and Colonialism

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Decentering Anthropology by Way of Malinowski

Critical Perspectives on Power, Place and Colonialism

Edited by Chandana Mathur and Dorothy L. Zinn

232 pages, 6 illus., bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-476-7 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (May 2026)

eISBN 978-1-83695-477-4 eBook Not Yet Published


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Reviews

“This book should be read by everyone interested in--or even skeptical about --the possibilities for unsettling and configuring alternatives to anthropology's relationship to the "cognitive empire" and the global "academic industrial complex." Critical projects advocating epistemic equity and the abolition of disparities in the production, circulation, and citation of knowledges along multiple, intersecting axes of difference and privilege call for decentering the canon. This timely volume unpacks the meanings and potential outcomes of decentering by following the intellectual trajectory, influences, mentoring, and archival legacy of a single figure: Bronislaw Malinowski. A Polish immigrant in the United Kingdom, he became a leading progenitor of British social anthropology. He was also a catalyst who inspired modes of rethinking that set the stage for the decentering strategies featured in this thought-provoking book.” • Faye V. Harrison, Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; a past president of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (2013-18) and the 2022 recipient of the Bronislaw Malinowski Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology.

“This is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the decenterings of our discipline, the complexities of the formations of networks of world anthropologies, and the formation of canonical totems and scholarly cosmopolitanisms. The book also provides an opportunity to see Bronislaw Malinowski as a hub of contradictions, inviting the reader to reconsider the many facets of an anthropological myth.” • Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Lerma-Mexico)

“The papers in this volume are evidence of Malinowski’s complex legacy. He seeded a generation of influential anthropologists across the globe; his theorising about the relationship of the particular to the general has yielded an enduring and multi-various legacy. While he might have surmised that one day there could be an anthropology of development, a medical anthropology and an anthropology of education, he could not have anticipated an anthropology of terrorism, of gender, or of selfhood and identity. His ideas have infiltrated many new ‘anthropologies' defined by adjectives such as political, economic, legal and psychological. As these papers illustrate, they also have encouraged a critical examination of the colonial and post-colonial dimensions of our era. A protean ancestral figure, then, Malinowski continues to fascinate, puzzle and inspire his intellectual descendants. This volume is a fine example of that inspiration.” • Michael W Young, Australian National University

“This book has a wonderful concept—it is a great idea to consider Malinowski’s contributions to anthropology from the perspective of 2025, a century after Argonauts of the Western Pacific was published. The introduction is terrific in setting forth the book’s argument.” • Gordon Mathews, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Description

Through reference to one of its most canonical figures: Bronislaw Malinowski, this volume de-centres anthropology seemingly in a paradox. Considering Malinowski as a disciplinary metonym, this de-centring addresses current debates on world anthropologies and the decolonization of anthropological knowledge, production, and careers. Despite (and because of) the publication of his diaries (Malinowski 1967), Malinowski remains part of an equivocal global anthropological tradition. Featuring scholars across various locations, genders and generations, this book neither celebrates nor “cancels” Malinowski. Instead, it offers an eccentric space of reconsideration and a prism for reflecting on power configurations in anthropology today.

Chandana Mathur is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is a former Chair of the World Council of Anthropological Associations (2016–18) and a former Vice President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (2021–23). She has received a Distinguished Service Award from the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and a Presidential Award from the American Anthropological Association.

Dorothy L. Zinn is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Her recent works include Migrants as Metaphor (2018) and The Public Value of Anthropology (edited with E. Tauber, 2015). She has also published annotated translations of two monographs by Italian ethnologist Ernesto de Martino, The Land of Remorse (2005) and Magic: A Theory from the South (2015).

Subject: Anthropology (General)Theory and Methodology


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