In recent decades, scholars have shed light on the coalescence and professionalization of the human sciences in a variety of national and transnational contexts, raising intriguing questions about power and resistance. Historians of social science in Latin America have exposed, for example, how the social sciences have justified systems of inequality, especially in the areas of race and gender (Stepan 1991, Appelbaum et al 2003) and motivated projects towards civil rights and the decolonization of knowledge (Stam and Shohat, 2012). Indigenous histories and settler colonial studies, on the other hand, have called attention to the ways in which the human sciences are implicated in the dispossession of indigenous groups (Wolfe 1999, Simpson 2014). This roundtable expands the conversation, bringing together scholars grappling with the impact of the human sciences in a variety of settings in the Global South with a focus on the development and application of ethical practices. Roundtable participants will present innovative historical research from hitherto understudied cultural settings that prompt us to reconsider ethical considerations and breaches across the human sciences. This multiplicity of topics, we hope, will provide space for comparative conversation even as we note disciplinary, temporal, and geographic contours and divergences in fields such as anthropology and psychology. Each panelist will briefly introduce their work, and then share one useful methodological intervention they have applied or developed, contributing to our collective effort to interpret the complex social dynamics and consequences inherent in the human sciences.
Organized by Julia E Rodriguez (University of New Hampshire)
