Nikola Balaš as a keynote speaker at EASA HOAN meeting, 25 April 2025

Abstract: Observations on contemporary anthropology stress the presence of pervasive inequalities. Divisions between the East and the West (or the Global South and the Global North), encompassing, among other things, the dominance of English language, journals and publishing houses, the unequal access to citations, prestige and grant funding, or the invisibility of non-dominant knowledge, have negative impacts on anthropological knowledge production and the character of world anthropology. Instead of creating a space where every voice is heard, all these phenomena perpetuate a situation of “Western dominance”, which favours some and disfavours others. Without denying the existence of these peculiar and often detrimental “economies of credibility”, I would like to cast the whole problem of dominance and hegemony in a different light and show what we can learn about it with the help of disciplinary history.

https://www.easaonline.org/networks/hoan/meetings