The role of anthropology in developing the " culture concept " in public discourse (original) (raw)
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Immigration, Integration and the Politics of Culture
1999
Anthropology The anthropology of ethnicity. Beyond "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" / Hans Vermeulen and Cora Covers (eds). -Amsterdam : Het Spinhuis. -With ref. ISBN 90-73052-97-1 Subject headings: anthropology / ethnicity.
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2011
section and the book, Charles Hale historicises and analyses the phases of collaboration between 'white' anthropologists and indigenous people. This is a must-read book, both for those working in the region and those interested in how anthropology has unfolded in 'other' contexts. However, while it is a welcome addition to the anthropological discipline, some important themes are missing. For example, in a region where many people are migrating to urban centres, one would expect a chapter on urban anthropology and the transformations and tensions linked to migration. Similarly, there could have been a deeper examination of migration to the United States. Further, there is no engagement with the evolving forms of Christianity and their relationship to Latin American politics. Lastly, the collection does not address the extent to which Latin American anthropologists are using distinctive methodologies or are drawing upon intellectual traditions other than those of American or European provenance. Do they engage with important local intellectuals? Do local genres such as 'magic realism' influence their writing and research? Despite these minor shortcomings, this book will become a cornerstone for undergraduate and graduate training. While the essays can be read independently, I recommend reading all of them, since it is in its entirety that the book helps the reader to understand the evolving world of Latin American anthropologies.
The Business of Anthropology and the European Refugee Regime full text
American Ethnologist, 2019
A B S T R A C T Metaphors of flooding and “flows” are often applied in the public sphere to the phenomena of displacement and migration, but there are also “waves” and “tides” of humanitarian actors, “voluntourists,” and researchers now focused on refugees. Humanitarian, security, and anthropological interventions in the European “refugee crisis” of 2015–16 often operate according to a shared logic of urgency and crisis. Key problems and pitfalls in current anthropological trends in the study of displacement on Europe’s doorstep are linked to the business dimensions of anthropological work. The business of anthropology reinforces the European refugee regime, which makes border crossers into targets of policing, intervention, and study.
CULTURAL IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP. THE CASE OF THE ROMA MINORITY IN ROMANIA
My paper focuses on the intersection between the Roma cultural-identitary construction and the political concept of citizenship, trying to reveal if such an approach can prove itself helpful in providing a better understanding of the unilaterality of the majority-Roma relationship. By unilaterality I understand the particular model in which the Roma-Romanian relationship has structured itself overtime. It mainly consists of a segregationist view that stresses the majority's responsibility with the minority's integration process and the failures to promote a partnership with the minority. This approach tends, in my opinion, to treat the minority in absentia, producing therefore the well-known effects of the so-called " Roma problem ". On the other hand, the idea of empowering the Roma minority is also seen as being fundamentally within the majority's attributions, therefore contradicting the very essence of the concept. My approach seeks to apply a theoretical framework developed first by Gramsci and later by Boudieu to this particular situation. Thus I hope to be able to provide a better understanding of both the history and the present of majority-minority relations and to highlight possible directions or outcomes relating to the dichotomy of integration/communitarian privacy in the case of the Roma minority. Motto: " Large scale immigration, within a society so well fettled as ours, can only be positively perceived provided that the immigrants have a solid background and that their religion and race do not prevent them from marrying and mixing with members of the host-population " The Royal Commision on Population, 1949 1
Anthropology of Transformation. From Europe to Asia and Back, 2022
In this paper I argue that ethnicity in Transylvania, but more broadly in Romania, was historically, and remains today, a means of local embeddedness which maintains human categories and rules of interactions, and anchors local socio-economic exchanges. We should not view ethnic categories as representations exclusively dividing society, but should also see them as part of local social integration which can stand against the excesses of xenophobic attempts by centres of power. Ethnic relations in local communities can stand for local forms of tolerance and civility. Transforming these local relations into more antagonistic political forms is not always as easy as politicians engaged in nationalistic propaganda would wish. Policy interventions need to take account of the integrative and solidaritygenerating aspects of ethnic and local identities. I also showed that Roma are rarely assigned advantageous positions by these local categories due to the ethnic and racial prejudices that they suffer.
Moving from country to country is a dislocating experience. This chapter is concerned with such dislocations and relocations in an age of transnational migration. These movements generate two paradoxes of culture. The first and perhaps obvious paradox is that in order to put down roots in a new country, transnational migrants begin by setting themselves culturally and socially apart. The second, more theoretical, paradox is that in such encapsulated communities culture is open, changing, and fluid and yet experienced as a powerful imperative. As transnational migrants settle in a new country, they transplant and naturalize cultural categories, not simply because this is their tradition or culture, but because as active agents they have a stake in particular aspects of their culture. Culture as a medium of social interaction confers agency within a field of sociality and power relations. Yet the mere mention of culture in studies of migration invokes a conceptual minefield. Following Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), culture has come increasingly to be grasped as an essentializing concept that reifies, stereotypes, orientalizes, racializes, exoticizes, and distorts an "Other." Such critiques of culture have been repeatedly leveled by postmodernist and deconstructivist postcolonial and anthropological critics, 1 as well as by skeptical sociologists and social anthropologists. 2 A further conceptual conundrum in the study of culture and migration arises from the fact that culture is never merely individual, a portable piece of baggage