Ideology (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article analyses the effect that ideology may have in the relationships established between archaeologists of opposing political persuasions. It is argued that modern historiographers’ assumption that archaeologists holding different ideologies could not possibly support each other needs urgent revision. It is proposed that, for the decades immediately before and after World War II, the disregard of the political aspect when dealing with colleagues can partly be explained by the widely held belief in the absolute value of science, especially at a time when, in the case of prehistoric archaeology, the discipline was being professionalized. In this article the links established between prehistoric archaeologists of opposing political ideologies is framed within the discussion of invisible colleges, the professional networks which form unofficial power bases within academia. It is suggested not only that they seem to be more interested in the control of academic resources than in political convictions, but that invisible colleges also operate at an international level. Thus, invisible colleges in each country may be linked with others elsewhere, even when their members live under completely different political regimes. As the basis for the discussion this article uses the correspondence between three prehistoric archaeologists: the Marxist Gordon Childe (1892–1957), the Francoist Lluís Pericot (1899–1978) and, to a lesser extent, the Falangist (i.e. Spanish Fascist) Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla (1905–72).
The Intersections of Identity and Politics in Archaeology
This paper traces the conjunction of two interrelated epistemic phenomena that have begun to shape the discipline since the early 1990s. The first entails theorizing social identity in past societies: specifically, how social lives are inscribed by the experiences of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. The other constitutes the rise of a politicized and ethical archaeology that now recognizes its active role in contemporary culture and is enunciated through the discourses of nationalism, sociopolitics, postcolonialism, diaspora, and globalism. Both trends have been tacitly shaped by anthropological and social theory, but they are fundamentally driven by the powerful voices of once marginalized groups and their newfound place in the circles of academic legitimacy. I argue that our disciplinary reticence to embrace the politics of identity, both in our investigations of the past and our imbrications in the present, has much to do with archaeology’s lack of reflexivity, both personal and disciplinary, concurrent with its antitheoretical tendencies. The residual force of the latter should not be underestimated, specifically in regard to field practices and the tenacity of academic boundaries.