William Gmayi - Government Anthropology, Colonial Encounter, and Asante Structures of Power
Lecture abstract
Government anthropology has long served as a crucial interface between colonial governance and the interpretive frameworks used to understand African political societies. In the first half of the twentieth century, colonial governments in British territories across Africa were increasingly interested in the use of anthropology to inform policies of indirect rule. Anthropologists, too, were keen to promote the practical value of their nascent discipline and this ‘colonial exchange’ was fundamental to the development of Schools of Anthropology such as that at Oxford. This talk focuses on the Asante polity as a case through which to interrogate how anthropological knowledge was produced, mobilised, and contested within the colonial encounter with a special attention to Capt. R. S Rattray’s ambiguous position as a government anthropologist both historically in relation to colonial administration and today in relation to the strategic use of his ethnography by Asante elites.
About the lecturer
William Nsuiban Gmayi is a Museum and Heritage practitioner at the Museums and Monuments, and the Chair of ICOM Ghana. He currently studying for his DPhil in Anthropology specialising in critical heritage, museum, and material culture studies in transcultural contexts. His research draws upon a wide range of ethnographic, historical, and participatory methods to explore how pasts are differently materialized and mediated in the present, and how they shape futures. His work examines the complex ways in which natural as well as cultural heritage is entangled in shifting regimes of value and geopolitical configurations. This has often involved re-engaging with colonial archives and collections relating to Ghana, exploring their ambiguous status as both sites of epistemic violence and, potentially, resources for communities to recover cultural histories, memories, and alternative ways of knowing and being in the world. He is especially interested in experimenting with decolonial approaches to activating the pluriversal possibilities of historical collections and archives, not least to address the social, environmental, and planetary crises of our time.
William Gmayi has previously worked as Research Fellow at the Global Heritage Lab, at the University of Bonn; a Fellow of the British Museum’s International Training Programme; a visiting Curator at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen; Research partner on Authoring Slavery in Ghana, a collaborative research project led by Aarhus University; and, since October 2023, he has been studying for his DPhil in social anthropology at the University of Oxford.