*Editorial Note: AT endorses the Brazilian Anthropological Association’s Motion to “Diversify Information and Education about the Global Anthropologies of Foreign Researchers and Anthropology Students” 

We, as the Editorial Team of the Journal Anthropological Theory and its sister blog Anthropological Theory Commons, endorse the recent motion approved by the Associação Brasileira de Antropologia [Brazilian Association of Anthropology] on the 32nd RBA (Brazilian Meeting of Anthropology) to “Diversify Information and Education about the Global Anthropologies of Foreign Researchers and Anthropology Students”. We share the commitment to 1. ‘Avoid cognitive extractivism’ and 2. ‘increase the diversity of knowledge about global anthropologies’.

The stance of Anthropological Theory can be found in our 2016 relaunch issue “Positioning Theory” Anthropological Theory 16 (2-3) (it can be accessed for free here). We call for situating anthropological theorizings “beyond the confines and frames of the Euro-American project” and its scholarships of appropriation. We highlight the importance of positioning theory in relationship to the ongoing struggles to decolonize anthropology and commit this journal to publishing “theory made by everybody” within a global conversation. This means continuing commitments to insure our editorial board, reviewers, and authors come from and reflect knowledges produced within multiple diverse positionings.

The motion is reproduced below:

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MOTION OF THE 32nd RBA: DIVERSIFY INFORMATION AND EDUCATION ABOUT THE GLOBAL ANTHROPOLOGIES OF FOREIGN RESEARCHERS AND ANTHROPOLOGY STUDENTS

Proponents: Gustavo Lins Ribeiro (Universidade de Brasília), Carmen Rial (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina).

Addressed to: graduate programs in anthropology in Brazil, the World Council of Anthropological Associations, the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES), the Associação Latino Americana de Antropologia, the European Association of Social Anthropologists, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (New York), the Ford Foundation (Rio de Janeiro and New York), World Anthropologies – section of the American Anthropology Journal, Director of the Division of Social and Economic Sciences of the US National Science Foundation and its equivalents in the United Kingdom and France.

Considering the unequal academic exchanges within the global academic system and in an effort to establish international exchanges that are more horizontal, fair and solidary, which can diversify and increase the global cross fertilization, the Associação Brasileira de Antropologia [Brazilian Association of Anthropology] has identified the following needs, and calls for all entities, agencies and agents involved in the pluralization of international anthropological knowledge to implement the following measures:

1. To avoid cognitive extractivism:

• Only finance research projects to be conducted abroad that clearly demonstrate knowledge of work produced by local academics by citing literature in the local language about pertinent issues;
• indicate the need for the involvement of foreign researchers with the local academic community where research is conducted by means of their presence in graduate courses in the country in question;
• clearly instruct foreign researchers to consider local academics as partners and not as informants, and to cite them properly.

2. To increase the diversity of knowledge about global anthropologies:

• offer courses that reflect the international diversity of contemporary anthropological production, by including an expanded range of authors and traditions and avoiding the automatic reproduction of hegemonic paradigms that are controlled by a limited number of academic centers;
• journals should publish articles by anthropologists from a variety of countries;
• pluralize the composition of editorial boards and their policies, considering the diversity of international perspectives, interests and styles.

Rio de Janeiro, 6 November 2020.