Channels and Barriers in the Nascent Dialogue Between Cuban and Foreign Anthropologists

Anthropology in Cuba finds itself at a critical juncture. The generation of Cuban anthropologists trained in the 1970s and ‘80s in the Soviet tradition of ethnography are gradually retiring, leaving the helm of key institutions in the field to younger colleagues. These younger generations of scholars, however, have not been afforded opportunities for systematic training on the island, since longstanding attempts to establish degree programs in social and cultural anthropology in Cuba have not yet been successful enough to produce new cohorts of fully trained anthropologists. Thus key institutions conducting anthropological research in Cuba today are staffed by researchers whose most thorough training is often in other disciplines, and for whom texts written in the Soviet tradition remain the prime points of theoretical and methodological reference. As a result, much of the excellent research that is conducted by Cuban anthropologists (or scholars conducting ethnographic research in contiguous fields) connects only partly with the kinds of questions and debates one might associate with “global anthropology” – that is to say, the anthropology that continues to emanate primarily from Europe or North America.