The Open Anthropology Lab: Encouraging Democratic and Innovative Languages, Formats, and Publics in Anthropology

• In Event: Innovative Academic Infrastructures: Digitalization, Collaboration, and Experimentation - I

Abstract

For the discipline of Anthropology, the Journal of Consumer Research ranks in first place on the SCImago Journal Rankings followed by the Journal of Peasant Studies. In the same ranking, only 15% of the journals are Open Access, most of them from the global south. What does it mean that the Journal of Peasant Studies is behind a journal of consumer research in the rankings for anthropological knowledge production? In what ways does academic output meet the demands of the communities they study if they don't have access to the results? This paper draws on reflections from STS about the relationship between knowledge production and society’s demands. It argues that anthropology should be opened up to broader publics. Anthropological production must be democratized to prevent intellectual extractivism and the creation of a privileged academic community that confines knowledge production to obscure language and enclosed economies of knowledge.

The ideas discussed in this paper are drawn from the achievements of the Laboratorio de Antropología Abierta - LAAB (www.antropologiaabierta.org), a Colombian initiative that encourages more democratic and innovative languages, formats, and publics in anthropological production. The LAAB emerged as an independent and experimental research platform to foster applied anthropology and ethnography with an ethical purpose. Currently, the LAAB experiments with innovative digital and audiovisual tools to ‘translate’ academic knowledge for diverse audiences, from policymakers to children in schools.

Author

• Giselle Figueroa, Laboratorio de Antropología Abierta