Teaching Otherwise: Toward Epistemic Justice in Anthropological Education

Abstract (English)

This paper explores the urgent need to reorient anthropological education toward epistemic justice by critically examining the continued dominance of Eurocentric knowledge paradigms in academic institutions. While anthropologists often display epistemological openness in research, classroom teaching remains often constrained by hierarchical models of knowledge and canons that marginalize plural, relational, and embodied ways of knowing. Drawing on decolonial theory and pedagogical praxis, I argue that rethinking teaching is vital to dismantling these hierarchies and cultivating more just and inclusive learning environments.

I explore how concrete tools for enacting epistemic justice through practices that are dialogical, collaborative, anti-extractive, and deeply attentive to the emotional and ethical dimensions of knowledge production can help us on the way. These practices challenge the residual colonial logics embedded in dominant pedagogies, including the framing of students as passive recipients rather than co-producers of knowledge.

While the enduring structures of whiteness in academic spaces shape these dynamics, this paper foregrounds the efforts of students and educators who are actively forging alternative pedagogical models. Through ethnographic reflection and case examples, I illustrate how approaches rooted in reciprocity, situated knowledges, and ethics of accountability open up space for a more pluriversal anthropology—one that affirms multiple epistemologies as not only legitimate, but vital to the discipline’s future.