Tuesday, February 6, 2007.
5:30 PM.
Location: Archaeology Center - Building 500 Seminar Room
This talk considers whether globalized archaeologists, heritage managers and the like, who as cosmopolitans often behave like and are treated as strangers in the sociological sense, can really also be "brothers", i.e. part of the family, who are able to empathize with and advocate for local-level interests. Such grass-roots engagement is a matter of human rights - of treating everyone justly, as equals - and so should be a sine qua non of ethical professional practice. Conceptual and practical difficulties abound, however, in making progress on this issue. Most pivot on the question of incorporating non-Western ways of knowing in Western intellectual practice and vice-versa. An cosmopolitan approach that seeks to create new, hybrid knowledge from cross-cultural encounters is suggested as one way forward.