Performative Informality Hurts Everyone: Getting to the Root of Intersectional Inequalities in Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Presidential Session: What Is at Stake? The Impacts of Inequity and Harassment on the Practice of Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation will discuss subtle forms of intersectional inequality that arise when academic communities are conceptualized as friendship-based and egalitarian, rejecting explicit hierarchy. I have described this as "performative informality" and argued that it stems from a meritocratic ideology that inadvertently reproduces Euro-American white-male privilege. In a discipline that prides itself on its friendliness, openness, and alcohol-fueled drinking culture, those who find themselves unable to enact or perform informality appropriately are at a distinct disadvantage. Drawing from a multisited ethnography of Andeanist archaeologists, I have made the case that it is the ephemerality and plausible deniability of performative informality that makes it hard to recognize and thus mitigate against. This argument draws on and contributes to the theorization of gender discrimination in archaeology, studies of work and labor, and feminist Jo Freedman’s concept of “the tyranny of structurelessness.” In the spirit of ensuring our feminism does not inadvertently reproduce Euro-American white-women’s privilege, this presentation will explicitly focus on the intersectionality of discrimination in archaeology; namely, how performative informality holds back women, but also people of color, those from working class backgrounds, non-US archaeologists, and others who do not have "cultural fit" in North American archaeological communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Presidential Session: What Is at Stake? The Impacts of Inequity and Harassment on the Practice of Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32673