Anthropological Interventions

with Katharina Schramm, Mihir Sharma, and Manuela Bojadzijev

In Germany today, critiques of racism, practices and forms of racialisation, and their multiple entanglements in anthropology have gained renewed prominence. 

On the one hand, in academic discussions an expansive debate around museum practices and colonial collections (in ethnographic as well as natural history museums) has highlighted colonial histories and their  connections to the genealogies of racism and notions of national belonging. Anthropology is deeply enmeshed in this history. At the same time, anthropologists are actively participating in the contemporary discussion by addressing the epistemological and institutional foundations of the discipline and reshaping collaboration and intervention with an anti-racist and decolonial perspective. On the other hand, the discursive, institutional, media and violent dimensions of racism are receiving increased political attention. The unequal treatment of migrant workers and refugees during the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic and the subsequent summer of protests against racist violence in public spaces have once again brought racism to the fore as a problematic issue in Germany’s social fabric. Funding initiatives (such as this one from the BMBF) underscore the need to give attention to research on racism and right-wing extremism, which are perceived as threats to democracy.

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