Foundations of Colonial Anthropology

Notes

Introduction to Colonial Anthropology Hello, class. I've got a lecture for you that takes a little bit of a deeper dive into colonial and decolonial anthropology or looking at concepts of colonization and decolonization as we see them in history and in the discipline. A definition of colonization is the extension of a nation state beyond its borders, with a particular interest, usually primarily one that is economic but may also be political in nature. We are quite familiar with processes of colonization in this country as part of the settler origin story here. And then, those arrival of Europeans into the Americas - we know that the arrival into the Americas created a whole range of impacts for those societies that have lived here since time immemorial. Impacts of Colonization in the Americas This is a depiction of the smallpox epidemic by Aztec chroniclers. We know that disease is just one of those impacts of the colonial encounter, and they are quite broad. And we will look a little bit at some of those. When we're thinking about colonization, it's always useful for me to just think about the level of cultural diversity that existed prior and how densely populated this region wa...