Event: Workshop on Ethics, Settler Colonialism, and Indigeneity in the History of the Human Sciences, University of Washington, 4 November 2018

On November 4, 2018 the University of Washington’s Walter Chapin Simpson Centre for the Humanities will be hosting a special workshop on Ethics, Settler Colonialism, and Indigeneity in the History of the Human Sciences.

Taking place from 9:30-4:30pm in Communications Building 202, this workshop will explore how historians of science and others might assess the ethical breaches and conundrums that took place in the past as researchers in the human sciences carried out investigations of and on “the other.”

A full description of the workshop can be found below.

A question that has long troubled historians is whether, and in what way, they should judge the historical actors they study, whose behaviors often fell short of what is considered ethical by today’s standards. Drawing on the recent work of historian Jan Goldstein, who has called for an “empirical history of moral thinking,” this workshop engages this question by asking how historians of science and others might assess the ethical breaches and conundrums that took place in the past as researchers in the human sciences carried out investigations of and on “the other.”

The Ethics, Settler Colonialism, and Indigeneity in the History of the Human Sciences workshop will explore this question by bringing historians of science into conversation with scholars of Indigenous studies, settler colonial theory, and theories of race and empire. In doing so, the workshop foregrounds the Global South and decenters the presumed centrality of North Atlantic histories of science while debating Goldstein’s proposal and addressing two sets of broader questions. First, what role has the construction of ethical and moral norms played in scientific inquiries of human diversity? How has the construction and transgression of ethical frameworks aided or interrupted settler colonial projects of dispossession? And second, what is the afterlife of ethical relations and their transgressions? In other words, do ethical relations persist through data sets, material objects, bones, and bodies? How do they continue to shape knowledge?

Questions about this event can be directed to Adam Warren at awarren2@uw.edu

3 Comments

  1. Will any results or summary of this workshop be available. I’m sure many people who cannot attend, such as me, would be very interested in what happens here. I am not an anthropologist, but am very aware of the importance of the issues here, and would welcome anything that comes out of this.

    • Jennifer Fraser

      November 1, 2018 at 8:24 am

      Hi Alan, This is a great idea! I’ll get in touch with our Participant Observations team to see if anyone attending the workshop would be willing to draft a reflection/summary piece for us!

    • Robert A. Strikwerda

      November 6, 2018 at 12:07 pm

      I second Alan McGowan’s comment. sorry I could not attend.

      Robert Strikwerda

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