Menu Expand

“Decolonise”: The Fall of a Colonial Statue, Student Protests and Trajectories of Anthropology in South Africa

  1. Journals
  2. Sociologus
  3. Vol. 72, Issue 1
  4. pp. 33–56

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Cite JOURNAL ARTICLE

Style
Becker, H. “Decolonise”: The Fall of a Colonial Statue, Student Protests and Trajectories of Anthropology in South Africa. Sociologus, 72(1), 33-56. https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.2022.1428704
Becker, Heike "“Decolonise”: The Fall of a Colonial Statue, Student Protests and Trajectories of Anthropology in South Africa" Sociologus 72.1, 2022, 33-56. https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.2022.1428704
Becker, Heike (2022): “Decolonise”: The Fall of a Colonial Statue, Student Protests and Trajectories of Anthropology in South Africa, in: Sociologus, vol. 72, iss. 1, 33-56, [online] https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.2022.1428704
Format
Download

“Decolonise”: The Fall of a Colonial Statue, Student Protests and Trajectories of Anthropology in South Africa

Becker, Heike

Sociologus, Vol. 72 (2022), Iss. 1 : pp. 33–56

Preview Login to order (PDF)

Additional Information

Article Details

Publisher Name
Duncker & Humblot
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.2022.1428704
Language
Multiple languages
Pages
24
Keywords

Pricing

Individual
€ 34.00 (incl. local VAT if applicable)

Author Details

Department of Anthropology, University of the Western Cape; P/bag X17, Bellville 7535, South Africa.

References

  1. Ahmed, A. K. 2019. #RhodesMustFall: How a Decolonial Student Movement in the Global South Inspired Epistemic Disobedience at the University of Oxford. African Studies Review, 63 (2), pp. 1–23.  Google Scholar
  2. Anthropology Southern Africa. 2004. Ethical Guidelines and Principles of Conduct for Anthropologists, accessed 6 December 2023, http://asnahome.org/images/About_the_ASnA/ASnA_ethical_guidelines_2004.pdf.  Google Scholar
  3. Bank, A. 2015. The Berlin Mission Society and German Linguistic roots of volkekunde: The background, training and Hamburg writings of Werner Eiselen, 1899–1924. Kronos 41 (1), pp. 166–197.  Google Scholar
  4. Bank, A. 2016. Pioneers of the Field: South Africa’s Women Anthropologists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Google Scholar
  5. Becker, H. 2010. Introduction to ‘Engaging Difference: Perspectives on belonging and exclusion in contemporary Southern and East Africa’. Anthropology Southern Africa, 33 (3–4), pp. 75–80.  Google Scholar
  6. Becker, H. 2016. South Africa’s May 1968: Decolonising Institutions and Minds, Review of African Political Economy website/blog: 17 February 2016, accessed 6 December 2023, https://roape.net/2016/02/17/south-africas-may-1968-decolonising-institutions-and-minds/.  Google Scholar
  7. Becker, H. 2018. Dissent, disruption, decolonisation: South African student protests, 1968 to 2016. International Socialist Review 111, pp. 31–47.  Google Scholar
  8. Becker, H. 2019a. South African Student Protests, 1968 to 2016. In Student Protests in the Global South. Annotated Sources (1918–2018), edited by Barbara Potthast and Katharina Schembs, (pp. 43–55). Cologne: University of Cologne, Department of Iberian and Latin American History.  Google Scholar
  9. Becker, H. 2019b. From Johannesburg to London: Student and Workers Struggles for Fair Labour Practices on University Campuses, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Southern African Office, 6 December 2019, not available anymore as of 6 December 2023, https://rosalux.co.za/publications/student-worker-struggles-for-fair-labour-practices-on-university-campuses/.  Google Scholar
  10. Becker, H. 2022. The Past(s) and Future(s) of South African Anthropology. In Pathways to Anthropological Futures, edited by Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, (pp. 145–158). New York: Wenner Gren Foundation.  Google Scholar
  11. Boonzaier, E. 2010. Racist accusations in contemporary South Africa: Lessons from studies of witchcraft. Anthropology Southern Africa, 33 (3–4), pp. 86–92.  Google Scholar
  12. Bošković, A. and van Wyk, I. 2005. Troubles with Identity: South African Anthropology, 1921–2005. [in Russian] Etnografičeskoe Obozrenie 2, pp. 95–101.  Google Scholar
  13. Boswell, R. 2017. Introduction: Continuities and contradictions in postcolonial African anthropologies. Postcolonial African Anthropologies, edited by Rosabelle Boswell and Francis B. Nyamnjoh, (pp. 1–12). Cape Town: HSRC Press.  Google Scholar
  14. Cousins, Th. and Reynolds, L. 2014. We Are All in the Same Boat Now in SA. Cape Times, September 12.  Google Scholar
  15. Cousins, Th. and Reynolds, L. 2016. Indexing the Human: From Classification to a Critical Politics of Transformation. Anthropology Southern Africa 39 (2), pp. 110–115.  Google Scholar
  16. Dubbeld, B. 2010. Dissecting sameness: South Africa and the politics of nonracialism. Anthropology Southern Africa 33 (3–4), pp. 81–85.  Google Scholar
  17. Gordon, R. and Spiegel, A. 1993. South Africa Revisited. Annual Review of Anthropology 22, pp. 83–105.  Google Scholar
  18. Hellmann, E. 1948. Rooiyard: A Sociological Study of an Urban Native Slumyard. Cape Town: Oxford University Press for Rhodes-Livingstone Institute.  Google Scholar
  19. Hunter, M. 1936. Reaction to Conquest: Effects of Contact with Europeans on the Pondo of South Africa. London: Oxford University Press.  Google Scholar
  20. Jansen, J. (eds.). 2019. Decolonisation in Universities. The Politics of Knowledge. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.  Google Scholar
  21. Kuper, A. 1999. South African Anthropology: an Inside Job. Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 45, pp. 83–101.  Google Scholar
  22. Lalu, P. 2009. The Deaths of Hintsa: Postapartheid South Africa and the Shape of Recurring Pasts. Cape Town: HSRC Press.  Google Scholar
  23. Langa, M. (eds.). 2017. #Hashtag. An Analysis of the #FeesMustFall Movement at South African Universities. Johannesburg and Cape Town: CSVR.  Google Scholar
  24. Le Grange, L. 2019. The Curriculum Case for Decolonisation. In Decolonisation in Universities. The Politics of Knowledge, edited by Jonathan Jansen, (pp. 29–47). Johannesburg: Wits University Press.  Google Scholar
  25. Mafeje, A. 1971. The Ideology of ‘Tribalism’. Journal of Modern African Studies 9 (1), pp. 252–261.  Google Scholar
  26. Magubane, B. 1971. A Critical Look at Indices Used in the Study of Social Change in Colonial Africa. Current Anthropology 12 (4–5), pp. 419–445.  Google Scholar
  27. Magubane, B. 1973. The Xhosa in Town Revisited: Urban Social Anthropology: A Failure of Method and Theory. American Anthropologist 75, pp. 1701–1715.  Google Scholar
  28. Naidoo, L.-A. 2016. Contemporary Student Politics in South Africa: The Rise of the Black-led Student Movements of #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall in 2015. In Students Must Rise: Youth Struggle in South Africa Before and Beyond Soweto ’76, edited by Anne Heffernan and Noor Nieftagodien, (pp. 180–190). Johannesburg: Wits University Press.  Google Scholar
  29. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. 2018. Epistemic Freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and Decolonisation. London & New York: Routledge.  Google Scholar
  30. Nyamnjoh, F. B. 2012a. ‘Potted Plants in Greenhouses’: A Critical Reflection on the Resilience of Colonial Education in Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies 47 (2), pp. 129–154.  Google Scholar
  31. Nyamnjoh, F. B. 2012b. Blinded by Sight: Divining the Future of Anthropology in Africa. Africa Spectrum 47 (2–3), pp. 63–92.  Google Scholar
  32. Nyamnjoh, F. B. 2020. Decolonising the Academy: A Case for Convivial Scholarship. Carl-Schlettwein Lecture 14. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien.  Google Scholar
  33. Rink, B., Mohamed, Kh., Ngoasheng, A., and Behari-Leak, K. 2020. Crossing Borders as ‘New’ Academics in Contested Times: Reflexive Narratives of Curriculum change and Transformation. Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning 8 (1) (online, no pagination), accessed 6 December 2023, https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v8i1.229.  Google Scholar
  34. Sharp, J. S. 1981. The Roots and Development of Volkekunde in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies 8 (1), pp. 16–36.  Google Scholar
  35. Spiegel, A. D. and Becker, H. 2018. South Africa, Anthropology in. In International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Helen Callan (online, no pagination). New York: John Wiley & Sons.  Google Scholar
  36. Van der Waal, C. S. (Kees). 2015. Long Walk from Volkekunde to Anthropology: Reflections on Representing the Human in South Africa. Anthropology Southern Africa 38 (3–4), pp. 216–34.  Google Scholar
  37. Van Wyk, I. 2022. Nationalism, Repugnance and Anthropology: A Case from the South. In Nationalism, Politics & Anthropology: A Tale of Two South Africans, edited by Ilana van Wyk and Jimmy Pieterse, (pp. 1–24). Mankon, Bamenda: Langaa Research & Publishing.  Google Scholar
  38. Walters, H. 2018. Tracing Objects of Measurement: Locating Intersections of Race, Science and Politics at Stellenbosch University. PhD dissertation in Social Anthropology. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University.  Google Scholar
  39. White, H. 2019. What is Anthropology that Decolonising Scholarship Should Be Mindful of?. Anthropology Southern Africa 42 (2), pp. 149–60.  Google Scholar
  40. Xaba, W. 2017. Challenging Fanon: a Black radical feminist perspective on violence and the FeesMustFall movement. Agenda 31 (3–4), pp. 96–104.  Google Scholar

Abstract

This article presents a set of arguments about decolonization debates and practices in the South African academy, and particularly efforts by anthropologists based at South African universities to reinvent their discipline from a 21st century southern African perspective. I argue that the student movements of 2015 – 2016 were the primary cause of robust conversations about epistemological and pedagogical issues that had previously not been raised in the post-apartheid South African academy. Questions about the politics of knowledge and curriculum reform were forcefully put on the agenda by the massive movements and opened the space for intense debates about the decolonization of academic institutions and knowledge production in teaching and research. The discussion starts with an appraisal of the student movements that called for decolonization of teaching and research in South African universities. Debates and practical efforts of decolonizing South African anthropology will be presented against the background of past and present anthropological practice in the country. Corresponding to my argument that while decolonization is an indispensable response to colonialism and coloniality everywhere, the concepts of decolonization have distinctive meaning in different contexts, I contend that in South Africa, as a grossly unequal society, social justice is inevitably a key element of any discussion of decolonization. Inequalities likewise continue to manifest in and between post-apartheid universities, which I demonstrate through close descriptions of recent efforts to decolonize the production of anthropological knowledge in three South African institutions.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Heike Becker: “Decolonise”: The Fall of a Colonial Statue, Student Protests and Trajectories of Anthropology in South Africa 33
Abstract 33
1. Introduction 34
2. ‘Because Rhodes Fell’: Student Protests and the Resurgence of Decolonial Thought in South Africa 35
3. Decolonisation in the South African Academy 37
4. Trajectories of South African Anthropology 38
4.1 Beginnings: The ‘Native Question’ 39
4.2 Volkekunde 39
4.3 Social Anthropology 40
4.4 Contradictions and Identities of South African Anthropologists 41
5. Towards a Decolonial Anthropology in South Africa? 44
6. Reinventing Anthropology in Three South African Universities 45
6.1 Stellenbosch University: Revisiting Race and Politics 46
6.2 UCT: Making Epistemic Plurality Possible 48
6.3 UWC: Decolonising the Curriculum 49
6.3.1 Experimental Anthropologies in the Classroom 50
6.3.2 Reinventing the First-Year Anthropology Experience 52
7. Conclusion 53
References 54

Contact

Duncker & Humblot GmbH Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg 9 12165 Berlin, Deutschland T: +49 30 790006-0

Quick Navigation

2024 Duncker & Humblot GmbH

Powered by CloudPublish

We use cookies to ensure that you get the best experience on our website. Learn more about how we use cookies.