QUO VADIS ANTHROPOLOGISTS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

QUO VADIS ANTHROPOLOGISTS - Essay ExampleIn this regard, anthropology, ethnology and ethnography ar fairly new as academic professions because these disciplines came go forth of the encounter of Western colonizers in the age of geographic expedition and empire with non-Western colonized peoples in Asia, Pacific, Africa and in the Middle East regions. Anthropological research and field studies not surprisingly take the Western view of the world in trying to make sense tabu of a sheer diversity of native gardenings. Anthropology now must take a stand to lodge relevant by seeking remedies to social inequities. Discussion Broadly speaking, anthropology and ethnography had three distinct phases which are salvaging of what is left of native cultures before these are lost forever, the romantic notions of doing rough extensive fieldwork by animated among the natives and lastly, both the anti- and post-colonial mentality of later generations of anthropologists. Again, al most(prenomi nal) always, anthropologists had been in most instances apologists (pun intended), for colonialism and imperialism by using an ideology of indorse mass. It is only now that anthropology is trying to make amends, by being proactive instead of reactive, as it had shown in the past, merely recording what has been but not taking action for preserving local societies and cultures with a stronger form of advocacy, timid of politicizing the profession. On hindsight, it can hardly do otherwise. Anthropologists cannot be mere observers forever people continue to pine under newer forms of colonialism. American anthropology largely came about as a result of the settlement of the fierce westside when much of America was considered as frontier territory, up for grabs by the white settlers in a gaga land grab from the native American Indians through a justification of using the Manifest Destiny ideology to assuage the guilty conscience of the new settlers. It was an unrelenting kind of cam paign to movement out locals from their native lands, which finally came to a head when Ishi is thought to be the last of his kind. In a way, anthropology had failed him because although most of the anthropologists knew he was the last of his phratry, they did not make any concerted effort to revive his tribal culture when the Yahi language is somewhat related to other native dialects and they could have encouraged him to get married, produce some offspring and perpetuate his tribe. It is a sad commentary anthropology was not able to save Ishi or his tribe he went the way of the dodo (a flightless bird), an extinct species. Anthropologists could have saved him from the fate of the dodo, but instead, they were so happy to have found a supposedly fine specimen of a real wild Indian they proceeded to study him and his myths, language, and other cultural aspects of his soon-to-be extinct tribe, collecting additional artifacts for a museum (Riffe & Roberts 1995). The effort to drive ou t the native American Indians was relentless and ruthless, resulting in massacres because of an uneven fight using bows and arrows versus rifles and cannons. It is a conclusion that resulted in the few remaining survivors forced to transfer into reservations. The discipline of anthropology did not try to mitigate this savage aspect of the war of pacification but instead was just content to collect some samples and specimens to be displayed in the museums. A white anthropologist would surely have a hard time doing some fieldwork by living among the Indians as the natives were mostly hostile, like that back in Kenya (Evans-Pritchard 1976252). The same pattern continues today in which some people and races