The relationship between knowledge production and power has been a topic of anthropological debate and inquiry for several decades. Building on Rey (2008), this special issue proposes to deepen the reflection on the links between knowledge and power by linking them to current challenges that concern both the studied topics and the ways of apprehending them. It draws on epistemologies that consider knowledge as situated, by looking at the ways in which individuals question, accept, and/or subvert power relations, as well as at the conditions of anthropological knowledge production. It aims to bring together pieces that, from a place of specific observation and enunciation, will shed light on academic knowledge production and power. It does so from an intersectional perspective that takes into consideration, among other things, the interweaving of systems of gender, class, race, ability, age. By drawing on empirical material, contributions should reflect the plurality of situations and positions of individuals as ‘subjects’.

TSANTSA welcomes the submission of contributions that take up, in particular, one of the following lines of questioning:

• Who speaks for whom? Who benefits from knowledge? What forms of intelligibility of the world are legitimised or invisibilised in current anthropological practice? The editors also propose to consider questions related to terminology and translation, in line with the reflections on the mobility of concepts, the importance of their specific context, and the stakes of their universalisation and cultural appropriation.
• What are the ethnographic practices that make collaboration with the various partners in the field visible (co-writing, participatory or collaborative research, etc.)? What are the limits of such approaches? How does power translate into tensions in the world of research and academia?
• How can researchers rethink the articulations between power and knowledge in the time of social networks, fake news, but also movements such as the feminist performances born in Latin America, or those of the gilets jaunes, Extinction Rebellion, or climate strikes?
• What are the value systems and norms invoked to resist, subvert, or counter the imposition of power? How are these practices invested with meaning, including moral meaning? This also involves considering ways of interpreting ordinary practices or social activities that enable negotiation with power, for example the ‘crime of solidarity’ or conscientious objection.

Please send paper abstracts (max. 2000 characters) to: anne.lavanchy@hesge.ch, Frederique.Leresche@clutteretu.unige.ch, info@cluttertsantsa.ch.

Publication timeline:

Abstracts: 18 February 2021

Full articles: June 2021

Publication: June 2022