The Construction of the Other: A Postcolonial Critique

The construction of the other. Who is the other? is the subject of analysis of anthropology, the native. The other we have learned does not exist objectively, detached from the values, objectives, intentions of the observer. We have argued that values (ways in which people understand the world around them) are socially constructed (they are products of specific cultures, times and places). The idea of progress, is a typical Western Europeans already present in the classical world of Rome and Athens but refined during Renaissance and culminating with the Industrial Revolution and its underlining geopolitical structure- central state and colonialism/imperialism. Such a cultural primacy was originally justified by theories (ways to understand the world around us) such as social evolutionism. Throughout 1800s and early 1900s the other was constructed fundamentally different, indeed inferior, when compared with Western European standards. Early critiques: cultural relativism. In early decade 1900s the inferior nature of the other (cultural, technological and cognitive) was put into discussion: Milinowski who argued for the role of culture in forming character and cognitive processes: they argued that the thought process of the other is not really different from ours ( 1980s powerful critiques to the ways anthropologists constructed the other as different from themselves)

For the first time, anthropology was directly accused of being the ‘handmaid of colonialism’...

1) Ethnographic information was used in the pacification, control, and subjugation of peoples in the colonies; 2) To provide a justification for the colonial system (the civilizing mission of Europe).

At the base of such critique was the challenge to the scientific bases of anthropology as an academic and scientific project: 1) Knowledge esearch is neutral (i.e. values free); 2) The objective, neutral knowledge of another culture or any aspect of the world (the basic assumption of anthropology as a science and of science more in general), is possible

By arguing the opposite, the postcolonial critique eventually led anthropologists (and many other social scientists) to reconsider the philosophical and methodological foundations of their discipline(s).