Becoming Anthropologists Amidst Multilayered Precarities
Academic disciplines thrive and survive for many reasons. In anthropology, the discipline makes its way by weaving spiral movements considering time, space, gender, race, economy, religion, politics, and other intersections — creating world-making practices such as theories, methods, and careers. The production of anthropological knowledge is vast — since its motor strength comes from the study of humans in relation with: other humans and more-than-humans, agencies that are part of the planet and compose social life — which makes its research scope difficult to measure. Still, such a process is itself riddled with precarities, especially for young and aspiring anthropologists in and from the Global South. It is never so simple to do research or to continue pursuing an academic career. Some stop after finishing their bachelor's, others during Masters or Ph.D., and a few get to experience what it is like to get a job as an anthropologist.
With diplomacy and national and international reciprocity programs, young scholars embark on journeys to start, or continue, their academic careers in other regions of their home countries or abroad. Such experiences often present them with a range of challenges: cultural differences, language barriers, financial instability, limited close academic guidance, and governmental and strict academic structures, enhanced by gender, race, religion, and other social intersections. Thus, what might have seemed a lofty experience of getting a degree, and possibly a more financially stable personal and professional life, reveals the precarity that budding academics undergo. But, as Anna Tsing (2015, p.27) argues, “One value of keeping precarity in mind is that it makes us remember that changing with circumstances is the stuff for survival”. While these situations are indeed dire, they can also catalyze new knowledge, methodologies, and practices as young researchers acquire the skills for a ‘competent navigation of crisis’ (Shevchenko, 2009). In anthropology, these experiences also lead to reflexivity, positionalities, and new networks that go beyond the politics of fieldwork.
Thereby, this thematic dossier aims to bring together the works of young researchers that delve into the precarities faced while pursuing an academic degree in anthropology. We are interested in practices that analyze processes of institutionalization, colonial and postcolonial settings in teaching and learning, such as classroom methodologies, syllabus compositions, and fixed hierarchies in curricula. We encourage autoethnographic reflections and collaborative efforts that tackle politics in and outside academia, bureaucracy, mobility, practices of care and solidarity, taking into account intersectionality, and emotions. In coping with and transforming precarious academic settings, we are also interested in ethnographic accounts and practices of young scholars who are members of indigenous and other traditional communities.
