Against reactionary populism: Towards a new public archaeology

[EN] From Brazil to the United Kingdom, 2016 was a critical year in global politics. The panorama changed so dramatically and so fast, that it will surely have a long-lasting impact in archaeology, anthropology and related fields. Heritage, ethics and the way we relate to the public will all be affected in one way or another. In this article we reflect critically on the phenomenon of reactionary populism and how it affects the practice and theory of archaeology. There are three main lessons that can be drawn from the advance of reactionary populism across the world. First, we have learnt that mere and more liberalism is not enough to face this political phenomenon. Second, archaeologists are perhaps not as fearsome agents of Empire as we thought. And third, there were other marginalized collectives out there who were not self-assertive indigenous communities, liberal African-Americans, class-conscious industrial workers or homeless interested in documenting their lives. Based on such lessons, three things we can do: we need an archaeology that provokes the People, instead of flattering them; we need an archaeology that teaches, we need a critical and transformative pedagogy that teaches about archaeology but also uses archaeology to teach; and we do not need to go against heritage; rather, we need an archaeology that escapes the 'heritage crusade'. To conclude, we have to make archaeology political again. We must stop flirting with progressive neoliberalism and go beyond those issues of identity, ethics and narrative that have occupied the political imagination of archaeology for three decades. We need to go back to the hard core of politics—radical dissent, conflict, inequality—and reconstruct archaeology as a public engaged practice to make it a truly critical voice in the global stage.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	González-Ruibal, Alfredo, Alonso-González, Pablo, Criado-Boado, Felipe
Format:	artículo biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	Cambridge University Press 2018-04
Subjects:	Social Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, Populism, Neoliberalism, Multiculturalism, Arqueología Social, Patrimonio Cultural, Populismo, Neoliberalismo, Multiculturalismo,
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10261/164142
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