Revisiting a West African Ethnographic Archive: Colonial Legacies, Decolonial Affordances
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This presentation will draw upon some of the work we have been doing as part of the AHRC-funded Museum Affordances / [Re:]Entanglements project. The project has been pursuing a sustained engagement with the archival legacies of a series of surveys conducted by Northcote W. Thomas, the first Government Anthropologist to be appointed by Britain’s Colonial Office. Thomas conducted four anthropological surveys in West Africa between 1909 and 1915, three in Southern Nigeria and one in Sierra Leone. Largely considered to be a failure at the time, the enterprise has nevertheless bequeathed to the present a remarkable – and contentious – mutlimedia archive. In his presentation, Paul Basu will take a collections-based approach, using a series of archival vignettes (documents, images, sound recordings, artefacts) to discuss both the historical context of the surveys, including what they tell us of the relationship between anthropology and colonial governance in the era, and contemporary re-engagements with the archive with communities in West Africa and beyond. Ultimately, the project – and the presentation – asks whether the legacies of anthropology’s entanglement in the project of colonialism also offers opportunities and resources for the ongoing project of decolonisation.
Date: 12 February 2021, 15:00 (Friday, 4th week, Hilary 2021)
Venue: Venue to be announced
Speaker: Paul Basu (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
Organising department: School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography
Part of: Anthropology Departmental Seminar Series: Trinity 2024
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Kate Atherton