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Identity Politics (Anthropology)

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  1. Introduction
  2. Identity politics, also commonly referred to as the politics of identity or identity-based politics, is a phrase that is widely used in the social sciences and humanities to describe the deployment of the category of identity as a tool to frame political claims, promote political ideologies, or stimulate and orientate social and political action, usually in a larger context of inequality or injustice and with the aim of asserting group distinctiveness and belonging and gaining power and recognition. Additionally, identity politics refers to tensions and struggles over the right to map and define the contours and fixed “essence” of specific groups. The phrase has become increasingly common in political anthropology since the second half of the 20th century with the emergence of a wide diversity of social movements, including the women’s movement, the African American civil rights movement, and the gay and lesbian movement, as well as nationalist and postcolonial movements. Central to the practice of identity politics are the notions of sameness and difference, and thus the anthropological study of identity politics involves the study of the politics of difference.
  3. General Overviews
  4. The monographs and edited volumes in this section offer a wide range of perspectives, and cover a wide breadth of issues, pertinent to the study of identity politics. Gledhill 1994 offers a general overview of the politics of identity in everyday life. Hall and du Gay 1996, Martin Alcoff and Mendieta 2003, and Martin Alcoff, et al. 2006 open up fruitful lines of inquiry and reflection. Sociologist Craig Calhoun (Calhoun 1994) helps to build a bridge between the fields of identity politics and social theory and is frequently cited by anthropologists writing about the politics of identity. Gupta and Ferguson 1997 traces the distinctive interconnections between place-making, subject formation, and practices of resistance. Rutherford 1998 explores the opportunities and challenges, which are presented by the ever-growing diversity of communities, cultures, and identities, for a new radical democratic politics. Cohen 2000 underscores the significance of boundaries in the politics of identity.Mach 1993 addresses the symbolic aspects of identity formation.
  5. Calhoun, Craig, ed. 1994. Social theory and the politics of identity. Oxford: Blackwell.
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  7. An important volume, consisting of eleven chapters. Its aims include addressing the need to conceptualize identity struggles from the perspective of contemporary social theory.
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  9. Cohen, Anthony, ed. 2000. Signifying identities: Anthropological perspectives on boundaries and contested values. New York: Routledge.
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  11. The contributors to this volume explore how relationships between groups are informed and underpinned by understandings group members have regarding their own distinctive identities and the nature of the boundaries dividing them from other group members. Topics include, among others, the political construction and (re)appropriation of aboriginality by colonists and indigenous peoples.
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  13. Gledhill, John. 1994. Power and its disguises: Anthropological perspectives on politics. London: Pluto.
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  15. Uses case studies from around the world, including Guatemala, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. Explores issues of domination and resistance, local-level politics, and the politicization of gender, among others. Suggests that anthropology relate the local to the global in a more radical way than ever before.
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  17. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson, eds. 1997. Culture, power, place: Explorations in critical anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  19. The essays in this collection emphasize that the so-called structures of feeling that connect people, in ways that are meaningful to them, to particular locales, and the formation of locality, involve the delineation of “self” and “other” through the process of identification with larger collectivities.
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  21. Hall, Stuart, and Paul du Gay, eds. 1996. Questions of cultural identity. London: SAGE.
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  23. A collection of ten influential essays by leading scholars, including one anthropologist. Explores various issues pertaining to identity politics, such as the question of identification, the European context of Turkish cultural transformation, negotiations of cultural difference, and the aesthetics of popular music.
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  25. Mach, Zdzislaw. 1993. Symbols, conflict, and identity: Essays in political anthropology. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.
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  27. Explores the role of symbols, such as the national and symbolic forms or rituals and myths, in the process of group identity formation and maintenance and in the definition and legitimation of the social order. Discusses the deployment of symbols to signify exclusion in a system of unequal power relations between social groups.
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  29. Martin Alcoff, Linda, Michael Hames-Garcia, Satya P. Mohanty, and Paula M. L. Moya, eds. 2006. Identity politics reconsidered. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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  31. A collection of essays by contributors from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including anthropology. Published in the Future of Minority Studies Research Project book series. Assesses anew the viability of identity politics for identity-based social movements, research programs, pedagogy, and democratic politics.
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  33. Martin Alcoff, Linda, and Eduardo Mendieta, eds. 2003. Identities: Race, class, gender, and nationality. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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  35. Provides selections from the work of influential theorists, including, but not limited to, Hegel, Marx, Beauvoir, Fanon, Hall, Wittig, and Said. Presents analyses of key categories of identity politics, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nationality.
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  37. Rutherford, Jonathan, ed. 1998. Identity: Community, culture, difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
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  39. A collection of eleven essays, focusing on the emergence of social movements and new political actors that do not fit the traditional Left/Right dichotomy. Explores a variety of related issues, including the articulation of identities in the context of black feminism, the politics of identity in the age of AIDS, and multiculturalism.
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  41. Reference Works
  42. The sources cited in this section include essays that raise key questions and address critical issues in the anthropological study of identity politics, including whether we should move beyond identity politics—a question explored in Clifford 2000. Hale 1997 offers a helpful framework for organizing and discussing a diverse body of literature. Di Leonardo 1994 considers the nature of identity politics, while Hall 1996 discusses the advantages of the concept of identification. Friedman 1992interrogates the role of history. Anderson 1992 and Rouse 1995 explore identity politics in the context of contemporary capitalism. Gupta and Ferguson 1992 discusses the politics of identity and cultural difference in a world of mass population movements and transnational culture flows.
  43. Anderson, Benedict. 1992. Long-distance nationalism: World capitalism and the rise of identity politics. Wertheim Lecture 1992. Amsterdam: Center for Asian Studies Amsterdam.
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  45. Argues that fin-de-siecle capitalism has led to the rise of identity politics. Also, popularized the term “long-distance nationalism,” which refers to the subjective experience of migration and the political importance of diasporas in the context of world capitalism.
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  47. Clifford, James. 2000. Taking identity politics seriously: “The contradictory, stony ground . . .” In Without guarantees: In honour of Stuart Hall. Edited by Paul Gilroy, Lawrence Grossberg, and Angela McRobbie, 94–112. London: Verso.
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  49. Builds on the work of theoretician Stuart Hall. Argues that if we adopt a position against identity politics or endorse claims to move beyond identity politics we risk being left with a simplistic view of contemporary social movements. Argues for a comparative understanding of identity politics and highlights the need for historically informed ethnography.
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  51. di Leonardo, Micaela. 1994. White ethnicities, identity politics, and baby bear’s chair. Social Text 41:165–191.
  52. DOI: 10.2307/466837Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  53. Considers identity politics as an American, not a global, phenomenon. Traces the genealogy of identity politics back to the 1960s, when the white ethnic community construct arose, and to the subsequent construction of a set of claims regarding an authentic trans-historical and global female selfhood.
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  55. Friedman, Jonathan. 1992. The past in the future: History and the politics of identity.American Anthropologist 94.4: 837–859.
  56. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1992.94.4.02a00040Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  57. Investigates the relation between social identification and the making of history. Contrasts Greek and Hawaiian constructions of their histories. Shows the articulation between local and global processes and argues that historical identity plays a key role in governing the place that people hold in the world.
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  59. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1992. Beyond “culture”: Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropology 7.1: 6–23.
  60. DOI: 10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00020Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  61. The authors argue that, in the postmodern era, space has become reterritorialized, thus forcing us to conceptualize anew the politics of identity. They argue that we need to explore the processes through which cultural difference is produced and discuss the merits of the borderlands concept.
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  63. Hale, Charles R. 1997. Cultural politics of identity in Latin America. Annual Review of Anthropology 26:567–590.
  64. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.567Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  65. The author organizes his discussion around the following four questions. When did the era of “identity politics” begin? What was the reason for the change in direction? How to best describe the contents of identity politics? What are the consequences for those involved in identity politics?
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  67. Hall, Stuart. 1996. Introduction: Who needs “identity”? In Questions of identity. Edited by Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, 1–17. London: SAGE.
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  69. Argues that the concept of identification is preferable to the concept of identity because it directs attention to a process of articulation, operating across difference. Suggests that identities are never unified, singular, or static and timeless, are construed within discourse, and emerge within the play of modalities of power.
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  71. Rouse, Roger. 1995. Questions of identity: Personhood and collectivity in transnational migration to the United States. Critique of Anthropology 15.4: 351–380.
  72. DOI: 10.1177/0308275X9501500406Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  73. Argues that, through promoting a politics of identification and encouraging people to articulate discontent through the idiom of identity, bourgeois-led ruling blocs from the 18th century onward have safeguarded their own interests and needs in a variety of ways, including privileging issues of prejudice and diverting attention from questions of material inequality.
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  75. Journals
  76. A large number of theoretically informed and empirically grounded essays and articles related to identity politics are published in a wide range of journals in anthropology, and also in interdisciplinary journals. A selection of peer-reviewed venues in which scholarship about identity politics is most prominently featured is listed in this section. Ethnicities provides interdisciplinary dialogue on questions of ethnicity, nationalism, identity politics, and minority rights. Focaal advocates an approach that rests in the simultaneity of ethnography, processual analysis, local insights, and global vision. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies offers queer perspectives on all issues touching on sex and sexuality. Identities specializes in work dealing with issues of power and inequality and examining culture as a site of struggle. Identity serves as a publication venue for identity-related work across a broad range of fields. PoLAR is devoted to the anthropology of law and politics, broadly conceived. Public Culture provides a forum for the discussion of the places and occasions where cultural, social, and political differences emerge as public phenomena. Sexualities covers a vast array of interdisciplinary topics, including the stratification of sexualities by class, race, gender and age, Queer theory, and lesbian and gay studies. Social Identities aims to furnish a focal point for theorizing issues at the interface of social identities.
  77. Ethnicities.
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  79. Published quarterly. A cross-disciplinary journal centered on sociology and politics. Aims, among other things, to explore the interconnections between culture and socioeconomic structure as regards the mobilization of ethnicity, other social movements, and the implications of such mobilization(s) for modern nation-states.
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  81. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology.
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  83. Published three times a year. Strives for the resurrection of an “anthropology at large” that can accommodate issues of the global south, post-socialism, mobility, metropolitan experience, capitalist power, and popular resistance into integrated perspectives.
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  85. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
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  87. Provides a forum for interdisciplinary discussion and publishes scholarship, criticism, and commentary in areas as diverse as law, religion, and literary studies. Aims to achieve the widest possible historical, geographic, and cultural scope.
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  89. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.
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  91. An interdisciplinary journal published bimonthly in association with Ethnic and Racial Studies. Explores the formation and transformation of racial, ethnic, national, transnational, and postcolonial identities in the contemporary world.
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  93. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research.
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  95. An interdisciplinary journal published quarterly under the sponsorship of the Society for Research on Identity Formation (SRIF). Welcomes, among other types of contribution, analyses of identity politics, reports of empirical research, integrative literature reviews providing a foundation for hypothesis development, and manuscripts advancing the theoretical understanding of identity.
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  97. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review.
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  99. The journal of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA). Interdisciplinary and published biannually. Features articles on, among other issues, nationalism, citizenship, political and legal processes, and multiculturalism.
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  101. Public Culture.
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  103. An interdisciplinary journal of cultural studies, published three times a year for the Institute for Public Knowledge. Aims to explore the cultural implications of migration and the construction of alternative modernities, among other issues.
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  105. Sexualities.
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  107. A bimonthly journal. Methodologically inclusive. Its broad scope combines sexualized identities, globalization, pornography, and mass media communication.
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  109. Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture.
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  111. An interdisciplinary journal published bimonthly. The journal is especially concerned with addressing issues at the interface of social identities, such as race, nation, and ethnicity, in the context of the transforming political economies and cultures of postmodern and postcolonial conditions.
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  113. Ethnicity
  114. Anthropologists tend to agree that there are three main theories of ethnic politics, namely, the primordialist, the instrumentalist (also sometimes known as circumstantionalist or situationalist), and the constructionist (alternatively called constructivist). Sokolovskii and Tishkov 1996 provides a comprehensive overview of these three theories. Some anthropologists, however, offer alternative understandings, exemplified by the writings of Edward Spicer, John Comaroff, Thomas Eriksen, and Charles Keyes. Spicer 1971 puts forth the oppositional approach in an attempt to go beyond the limits of the dichotomy between primordialism and instrumentalism. Keyes 1981 combines insights from the primordialist and instrumentalist approaches in an effort to understand the politics of ethnic identity. Comaroff 1995 argues against the possibility that a theory of ethnicity or nationality can exist. Eriksen 2001, discussing ethnic and national identities in conjunction with intergroup conflict, draws attention to the need for an anthropology of identity that takes account of the self and personal experiences. Comaroff and Comaroff 2009 offers a more recent approach to ethnic identity politics.
  115. Comaroff, John L. 1995. Ethnicity, nationalism and the politics of difference in an age of revolution. In Perspectives on nationalism and war. Edited by John L. Comaroff and Paul C. Stern, 243–276. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science.
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  117. Discerns the primordialist, instrumentalist, neo-primordialist (the approach that conjoins primordialism and instrumentalism), and constructionist theoretical approaches to understanding ethnicity and nationalism and discusses the weaknesses of these approaches. Interrogates the politics of identity in the context of globalization.
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  119. Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, inc. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  120. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226114736.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  121. The authors analyze the increasing corporatization and commodification of ethnicity and discuss the future of ethnicity in the context of neoliberal capitalism. Examples are drawn from, among other countries, South Africa, Vanuatu, Peru, and Argentina.
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  123. Eriksen, Thomas H. 2001. Ethnic identity, national identity and intergroup conflict: The significance of personal experiences. In Social identity, intergroup conflict, and conflict reduction. Edited by Richard D. Ashmore, Lee J. Jussim, and David Wilder, 42–70. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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  125. While the author acknowledges that the instrumentalist and constructivist approaches to ethnicity are fruitful, he suggests that our understanding of social identity remains incomplete without considering people’s personal experiences.
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  127. Keyes, Charles F. 1981. The dialectics of ethnic change. In Ethnic change. Edited by Charles F. Keyes, 4–30. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press.
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  129. Argues that ethnicity involves a primordial attachment among people and it is important only to the extent that it serves to orient people as they strive to achieve their own interests in relation to other people.
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  131. Sokolovskii, Sergey, and Valery Tishkov. 1996. Ethnicity. In Encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropology. Edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, 190–193. New York: Routledge.
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  133. This encyclopedia entry offers an overview of the theoretical approaches to understanding ethnicity and provides directions for future research on ethnicity.
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  135. Spicer, Edward. 1971. Persistent cultural systems. Science 174:795–800.
  136. DOI: 10.1126/science.174.4011.795Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  137. An influential article introducing the oppositional approach, whereby the primordialist and instrumentalist approaches are synthesized to describe how ethnic sentiments are strengthened in situations of conflict between groups.
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  139. Primordialist Perspective
  140. Anthropologists espousing the primordialist perspective suggest that ethnic identification is based on so-called natural and primordial attachments, such as ties of blood, language, and religion, that impart a strong sense of belonging to a group. They also claim that identity is unchanging and fixed over time. Primordialism is rooted in the intellectual heritage of German sociologist Max Weber and is deeply influenced by the work of American sociologist Edward Shils, who translated many of Weber’s writings into English and was the first to articulate the primordialist view in the late 1950s in the United States. Geertz 1963 introduced the term “primordial” into anthropological discussions. The work of Harold Isaacs (for example, Isaacs 1975) is often cited as an example of the primordialist approach. Pierre van den Berghe (van den Berghe 1981) is considered a major representative of the sociobiological viewpoint within the primordialist framework, whereby ethnic phenomena are rooted in “nepotism,” a genetically based preference for kin over non-kin. The primordialist perspective was also shared among Soviet anthropologists, and was promoted by Julian Bromlej, as seen in Bromlej 1981, director of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Ethnography, who helped to shape the so-called Soviet ethnos theory.
  141. Bromlej, Julian. 1981. Sovremennye problemy ėtnografii: ocherki teorii i istorii. Moscow: Nauka.
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  143. Suggests that the concept of ethnos is key to understanding ethnic phenomena. Defines ethnos as a historically fixed group of people sharing, among other traits, relatively stable cultural features and awareness of their unity and difference from other such groups.
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  145. Geertz, Clifford. 1963. The integrative revolution: Primordial sentiments and politics in the new states. In Old societies and new states: The quest for modernity in Asia and Africa. Edited by Clifford Geertz, 105–157. New York: Free Press.
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  147. A seminal essay. Explores the tension between primordial sentiments, directly linked to the so-called established facts of social existence (for example, kinship ties, a common language, and common religion), and civil politics in the new states.
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  149. Isaacs, Harold R. 1975. Idols of the tribe: Group identity and political change. New York: Harper & Row.
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  151. Recognizes the political significance of ethnicity and focuses on the elements that constitute group identity. Argues that group identity is shared among individuals from the moment of birth, when they inherit a set of shared physical traits, such as skin color and bodily features.
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  153. van den Berghe, Pierre. 1981. The ethnic phenomenon. New York: Elsevier.
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  155. Argues that ethnicity is a form of extended kinship, and that ethnic groups are defined by common genetic origin and come into existence through endogamy and geographic proximity of their members.
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  157. Instrumentalist Perspective
  158. Anthropological works guided by the instrumentalist perspective treat ethnicity as a tool, which is either manipulated by elites to elicit support from members of other groups and thus pursue their own self-interests or is used instrumentally by social actors to advance their goals according to circumstances. The origins of the instrumentalist approach lie with the “Manchester School,” a group of anthropologists at the University of Manchester who were influenced by the work of anthropology department founder and Chair Max Gluckman (Gluckman 1940). Glazer and Moynihan 1963 (written by sociologists Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan) represents a landmark in the scholarly study of ethnic identification from an instrumentalist perspective. Within anthropology, Leach 1964 is an important forerunner of instrumentalism. Cohen 1969, Despres 1967, and Southall 1970 are considered to be prime examples. Epstein 1978 criticizes Cohen’s understanding of ethnicity and of the reasons why ethnicity comes into existence. Instrumentalism is also known sometimes by the terms circumstantionalism and situationalism, emphasizing especially the specific context within which ethnicity emerges and acquires meaning. Vincent 1974 is a seminal illustration of this tendency.
  159. Cohen, Abner. 1969. Custom and politics in urban Africa: A study of Hausa migrants in Yoruba towns. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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  161. An ethnography advancing a political theory of ethnicity. Focuses on the Hausa community in the Yoruba city of Ibadan. Describes “retribalization,” the process whereby the Hausa joined the Tijaniyya mystical order to affirm and accentuate their ethnic distinctiveness when the rise of Nigerian nationalism after World War II appeared to threaten their interests.
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  163. Despres, Leo A. 1967. Cultural pluralism and nationalist politics in British Guiana. Chicago: Rand McNally.
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  165. Analyzes nationalist politics and examines the political mobilization of groups by Guianese leaders in the struggle for power in multi-ethnic British Guiana (now Guyana).
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  167. Epstein, Arnold Leonard. 1978. Ethos and identity: Three studies in ethnicity. Chicago: Aldine.
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  169. Argues that ethnic identity is but one form of social identification and that social circumstances influence ethnic mobilization. Emphasizes the cognitive and affective aspects of ethnic identification.
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  171. Glazer, Nathan, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. 1963. Beyond the melting pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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  173. The authors study the five ethnic groups mentioned in the subtitle and argue against the thesis that American society is a melting pot. They suggest that ethnic groups are interest groups, re-created by new experiences and in new situations.
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  175. Gluckman, Max. 1940. Analysis of a social situation in modern Zululand. Bantu Studies 14.1: 1–30.
  176. DOI: 10.1080/02561751.1940.9676107Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  177. Describes and analyzes the events of a single day, involving interactions between Zulus and Europeans at the opening of a new bridge and at a meeting in the office of the magistrate, in Zululand in 1938. Lays the groundwork for understanding the importance of context and group interaction in the study of ethnicity.
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  179. Leach, Edmund. 1964. Political systems of Highland Burma: A study of Kachin social structure. London: G. Bell for London School of Economics and Political Science.
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  181. Argues that the process of structural change occurs through the manipulation of alternatives for action among the Kachins. Such manipulation is performed by particular individuals, at a particular time, and as a means of achieving social advancement. First published in 1954.
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  183. Southall, Aidan. 1970. The illusion of tribe. Journal of Asian and African Studies 5.1/2: 28–50.
  184. DOI: 10.1177/002190967000500104Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  185. Suggests that numerous tribes around the world were brought into being often in the context of demands presented by the colonial situation and of political developments unfolding within particular groups.
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  187. Vincent, Joan. 1974. The structure of ethnicity. Human Organization 33.4: 375–379.
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  189. Argues that ethnicity is a tool that can be used to accomplish objectives and calls attention to the situations in which ethnic interactions unfold.
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  191. Constructionist Perspective
  192. Constructionism, also sometimes called constructivism, stresses the social construction and fluidity of ethnic identification and emphasizes the ways in which ethnic identities are negotiated through social interaction. Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth (Barth 1969), building on the work of his mentor Edmund Leach, broke fresh ground in the study of the politics of ethnic identity in clearly articulating the suggestion that attention must be paid not to the cultural attributes of a particular group, but rather to the ethnic boundary defining the group. Eriksen 1993 draws explicitly on the work of Barth to argue that ethnicity is relational. Richard Jenkins (Jenkins 1997) is a major proponent of the constructionist perspective, and builds on the work of Barth in significant ways.Vermeulen and Govers 1994 traces developments in understanding ethnic identification through the twenty-five years following Barth’s groundbreaking thesis. Tambiah 1996 shows the need to go beyond constructionist, and also instrumental and primordial, viewpoints. Brubaker 2004, an important text from sociology that anthropologists have drawn on, criticizes constructivist stances and provides important insights for anthropologists, and social scientists more generally.
  193. Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Introduction. In Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference: Results of a symposium held at the University of Bergen, 23–26 February 1967. Edited by Fredrik Barth, 9–38. Boston: Little, Brown.
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  195. A seminal essay. Calls attention to the processes through which groups create, maintain, and negotiate the ethnic boundaries demarcating them. Proposes that the characteristic of self-ascription by social actors themselves and ascription by others is the critical feature of ethnic groups.
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  197. Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity without groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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  199. Argues that ethnicity (and also race and nation) should be conceptualized as a perspective on the world, a way of understanding and framing experience, and suggests the usage of three clusters of terms: identification and categorization, self-understanding and social location, and commonality and connectedness.
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  201. Eriksen, Thomas H. 1993. Ethnicity and nationalism: Anthropological perspectives. London: Pluto.
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  203. Argues that ethnicity emerges within the context of relationships between groups whose members consider themselves, and are considered by members of other groups, to be distinct in terms of their culture. Cultural differences matter only insofar as they are made relevant in social interaction and are perceived as important.
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  205. Jenkins, Richard. 1997. Rethinking ethnicity: Arguments and explorations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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  207. Argues that the social anthropological model of ethnicity, commonly identified with Barth, has its intellectual roots in the work of sociologists Weber and Hughes. Social categorization and power relations are viewed as key issues for fully understanding the ethnic identification process. Highlights the importance of the cultural content to ethnic relationships.
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  209. Tambiah, Stanley. 1996. Leveling crowds: Ethnonationalist conflicts and collective violence in South Asia. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press.
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  211. Analyzes the politicization of ethnicity in South Asia. Suggests that we should track the communicational, mobilizational, and semiotic processes involved in propelling large crowds of people toward collective action.
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  213. Vermeulen, Hans, and Cora Govers, eds. 1994. The anthropology of ethnicity: Beyond “Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.” Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.
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  215. A distinguished collection of four essays by Fredrik Barth, Katherine Verdery, Anthony Cohen, and Eugeen Roosens. Explores enduring and emerging issues in the analysis of ethnicity, issues of nationalism and state-making, boundaries of consciousness and consciousness of boundaries, and the primordial nature of origins among migrants.
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  217. Nationality
  218. The anthropological study of the processes through which national identities are construed, and acquire political significance, and of the political dynamics that play on people’s identities and help to generate nationalist ideologies, is a development that emerged in the 1980s mainly because of the surge of nationalist movements worldwide during that period. The works outlined in this section represent valuable and influential studies. Works such as Anderson 1983, Gellner 1983, andHobsbawm and Ranger 1983 have had considerable impact on anthropological analyses focusing on the politics of national identity. Chatterjee 1993 disagrees with an argument made in Anderson 1983, namely that 20th-century nationalisms in Africa and Asia followed forms that were established in Europe. Verdery 1991 examines the links between national identity and cultural politics. Herzfeld 1982 addresses the role of folklore in the making of national identity. Handler 1988 and McDonald 1989 shift the focus from the creation of national identities in nation-states to the development of regional nationalist ideologies.
  219. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
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  221. Defines the nation as an imagined political community, and imagined as limited and sovereign at that. Argues that nationality and nationalism are cultural artifacts that were created toward the end of the 18th century through various processes, including the spread of print-capitalism and the development of certain vernaculars as languages-of-state.
  222. Find this resource:
  223. Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  225. Examines how, under postcolonialism, nationalist Indian elites strived to create a “modern” and at the same time non-Western national culture and to articulate a definition of Indian identity within the cultural domain. Argues that the discourses of marginalized groups, the so-called fragments of the nation, influenced the dominant nationalist discourse.
  226. Find this resource:
  227. Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
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  229. Argues that nationalism, a political principle maintaining that there should be congruence between the political (the state) and the national (the nation) units, is the inevitable corollary of modernity, equated with industrialism. Nationalism involves the production, mainly through a centralized educational system, of a culturally homogeneous society the industrializing state needs to prosper.
  230. Find this resource:
  231. Handler, Richard. 1988. Nationalism and the politics of culture in Quebec. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
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  233. Explores Quebecois nationalist discourse. Discusses the objectification of what is imagined as a unique and authentic national culture. Argues that belief in the existence of a bounded, continuous, and homogeneous nation, considered to be both a collective individual and a collection of individuals, is based on belief in the existence and possession of a national culture.
  234. Find this resource:
  235. Herzfeld, Michael. 1982. Ours once more: Folklore, ideology, and the making of modern Greece. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.
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  237. Demonstrates how some 19th-century Greek scholars constructed cultural continuity between ancient and modern Greece and, in so doing, established the discipline of folklore studies and contributed to strengthening the political process of nation-building. Folklore was used to authenticate Greeks’ national identity and cultural status as Europeans, and helped to serve and to further develop nationalist ideology.
  238. Find this resource:
  239. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The invention of tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  241. An important collection of essays, investigating the national phenomenon while paying close attention to “invented traditions,” or “a set of practices . . . seek[ing] to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition” (p. 1), in western Europe since the Industrial Revolution. Argues that invented traditions create bonds of loyalty.
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  243. McDonald, Maryon. 1989. “We are not French!”: Language, culture and identity in Brittany. New York: Routledge.
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  245. Analyzes the creation of contemporary Breton identity, and illuminates the key role of Breton language in its creation, within the French national context. Argues that, for Breton nationalist movement activists, Breton identity stands in opposition to France’s ideals, whereby national unity and linguistic homogeneity have been inextricably intertwined since the 1789 Revolution.
  246. Find this resource:
  247. Verdery, Katherine. 1991. National ideology under socialism: Identity and cultural politics in Ceauşescu’s Romania. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
  248. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520072169.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  249. Analyzes national identity as a crucial component of cultural politics and examines the role Romanian intellectuals (people who engaged in the practice of cultural production) played in the (re)creation of a national ideology throughout the communist period in Romania. Explores how this ideology helped to erode the Communist Party’s legitimacy.
  250. Find this resource:
  251. Nationalism and Conflict
  252. As a result of the eruption of nationalist conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, and in some of the former European colonies in Asia and Africa, many anthropologists sought to understand the circumstances under which nationalist ideologies and policies may produce destructive effects. This section contains prime examples of such efforts. Kapferer 1988 and Hayden 1999 analyze the logic and destructive effects of particular nationalist ideologies. Denich 1994 sheds light on the ideological and historical context within which atrocities erupted in the early 1990s after the political order collapsed in Yugoslavia. Tambiah 1992 and Tambiah 1996 make a major contribution to our understanding of collective violence and ethno-nationalist conflicts in South Asia and beyond. Van der Veer 1994offers an important example of work analyzing the relationship between religious identities and nationalist politics as well as the characteristics of conflict between religious communities. Danforth 1995 and Mamdani 2001 provide precious insights into, respectively, the role of diasporas and how the failures of nationalism can be implicated in large-scale civilian involvement in genocide.
  253. Danforth, Loring M. 1995. The Macedonian conflict: Ethnic nationalism in a transnational world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  255. Analyzes the involvement of Greek and Macedonian diaspora communities in the dispute between Greeks and Macedonians over which group has the right to identify itself as Macedonian. Underscores the role diasporas play in ethno-national disputes.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Denich, Bette. 1994. Dismembering Yugoslavia: Nationalist ideologies and the symbolic revival of genocide. American Ethnologist 21.2: 367–390.
  258. DOI: 10.1525/ae.1994.21.2.02a00080Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  259. The evocation of memories of past atrocities and the revival of Ustasha nationalist symbols from wartime Croatia defined the sociopolitical order along ethno-national lines and stirred emotions among strangers/members of the same nation, thus justifying aggression.
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  261. Hayden, Robert M. 1999. Blueprints for a house divided: The constitutional logic of the Yugoslav conflicts. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.
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  263. Presents the concept of constitutional nationalism, whereby the basic subject of the constitution was not the individual citizen but rather the ethnically defined majority nation in any particular state in the former Yugoslavia, to explain the collapse of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Kapferer, Bruce. 1988. Legends of people, myths of state: Violence, intolerance, and political culture in Sri Lanka and Australia. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
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  267. Analyzes how the myths of Sinhalese and Australian nationalism, respectively, articulate with practices, specifically healing rituals and the national Anzac Day ceremonies, focusing on the reconstitution of the person and the ideal of the individual. Explores how these dynamics interweave with nationalist rhetoric.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Mamdani, Mahmood. 2001. When victims become killers: Colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  271. Analyzes the institutional and ideological construction of Hutu and Tutsi as political identities by German and Belgian colonial rulers, specifically how Hutu and Tutsi came to mean native/indigenous and settler/alien. Equally important, explores the failure of Rwandan nationalism to transform these identities, and the ensuing violence against those seen as foreigners.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Tambiah, Stanley. 1992. Buddhism betrayed? Religion, politics and violence in Sri Lanka. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  275. Traces the processes through which a homogenized Sinhalese national identity and culture were produced and Buddhism became interwoven with the pursuit of Sinhalese nationalist interests at the expense of the interests of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Tambiah, Stanley. 1996. Leveling crowds: Ethno-nationalist conflicts and collective violence in South Asia. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  279. In a work based on case studies from Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan, the author tries to understand comparatively ethno-nationalist conflicts by using three sets of analytical concepts: focalization and transvaluation, nationalization and parochialization, and routinization and ritualization of violence. Uses the notion of leveling in his discussion of collectivities that are motivated to engage in violence.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. van der Veer, Peter. 1994. Religious nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  283. Shows how religious nationalism in India builds on, and transforms, frameworks that were available before colonialism. Argues that religious identities are constructed and contested in ritual discourse and practice and shows how they can serve to legitimize the nationalist project. Explores the relationship between ritual constructions of gender and nationalist constructions of the nation.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Religion
  286. Critical studies of the politics of religious identity are generally concerned with exploring religious identity as a site of power and struggle, and with analyzing the social and political implications of religious affiliation, values, and beliefs. Asad 2003 and Munson 1993 represent a longstanding anthropological interest in advancing our understanding of the intimate relationship between religion and political power. The study of the role religious identity plays in conflict between groups, as exemplified by McIntosh 2009 and Mahmood 1996, has been an important focus among anthropologists. Warren 2001 is an example of recent ethnographic work on faith-based politics.Lindquist and Handelman 2011 analyzes religion as a tool of identity politics in the context of globalization. It also deserves mention that recent work on sexuality in anthropology has been about identity politics at the intersection of sexuality and religion, and Erzen 2006 and Gaudio 2009 offer such examples.
  287. Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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  289. Sheds light on the connection between the category of “the secular” and “secularism” as a political and governmental doctrine. Examines how the modern state produced the distinction between religion and the secular to secure state power. Argues that the sacred and the secular are interdependent.
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  291. Erzen, Tanya. 2006. Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian conversions in the ex-gay movement. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  293. Focuses on the worldviews and everyday lives of participants in New Hope, an ex-gay ministry. Explores the instability of the process of religious and sexual conversion to evangelical Christianity and heterosexuality. Analyzes the appropriation of the ex-gay movement by the Christian Right and conservative political movements to repudiate gay identity and rights.
  294. Find this resource:
  295. Gaudio, Rudolf Pell. 2009. Allah made us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African city. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  296. DOI: 10.1002/9781444310535Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  297. An account of the ‘yan daudu, “men who act like women” and thus transgress the strict interpretation of Islamic law, in northern Nigeria. Discusses their challenges against the background of Islamic reformists’ ideas concerning “proper” Muslim behavior and practices. Examines what ‘yan daudu’s experiences tell us about power and religion in postcolonial societies and the world at large.
  298. Find this resource:
  299. Lindquist, Galina, and Don Handelman, eds. 2011. Religion, politics, and globalization: Anthropological approaches. New York: Berghahn.
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  301. Contains eight chapters, a prologue and introduction, and an afterword. Divided into four sections addressing shaping religion through politics, open conflicts between religion and politics, the tight embrace of religion and politics, and opening new space for religion with an emphasis on evangelical Christian proselytizing and Islamist terrorism.
  302. Find this resource:
  303. Mahmood, Cynthia Keppley. 1996. Fighting for faith and nation: Dialogues with Sikh militants. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
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  305. A narrative ethnography. Explores why Sikh militants fight for the consolidation of the Sikh religion and the creation of a sovereign Sikh nation. Argues that political and religious domination are linked in the Indian state and that Sikh political separatism is intertwined with the assertion of religious orthodoxy.
  306. Find this resource:
  307. McIntosh, Janet. 2009. The edge of Islam: Power, personhood, and ethno-religious boundaries on the Kenya coast. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  309. Analyzes the role that different forms of Islamic religious discourse and practice among members of the Swahili and Giriama groups in the Kenyan town of Malindi play in ethno-religious division and tensions between the two groups. Explores the circulation of a hegemonic premise, whereby Giriamaness and Islam are allegedly incompatible, and its instantiations.
  310. Find this resource:
  311. Munson, Henry. 1993. Religion and power in Morocco. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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  313. Examines the political role of Islam, whereby rulers are viewed as sacred kings to be obeyed unconditionally and are considered legitimate by virtue of their selection by religious scholars and as long as they rule justly. Argues that the judicious use of force and fear plays a key role in the legitimation of political authority and power in Islamic terms.
  314. Find this resource:
  315. Warren, Mark R. 2001. Dry bones rattling: Community building to revitalize American democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  317. A study of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in Texas and the Southwest, interfaith and multiracial networks working to raise the concerns of previously marginalized groups and make the public sphere more inclusive. Argues that faith imperatives and political action have coalesced in the IAF into a theology of organizing.
  318. Find this resource:
  319. Race
  320. Anthropological analyses of race-based identity politics start from the premise that race is a sociocultural phenomenon, not a biological reality, and interrogate the historical emergence, reproduction, and application of ideas about biological variations among humans. The work of sociologist Paul Gilroy has provided a strong foundation for anthropologists, and Gilroy 1987 is a landmark study. Smedley 1999, de la Cadena 2000, and Mamdani 2001 reflect a long-standing interest in the history of the concept of race. Stoler 1995 shows how the politics of “race” is a formative feature of modernity. Dikötter 1997 offers a cross-cultural comparison, and underscores that the racialization of identities is not a uniquely “Western” phenomenon. Kertzer and Arel 2002and Werbner and Modood 1997 illustrate, respectively, some of the tools of racialization and of race-based politics.
  321. de la Cadena, Marisol. 2000. Indigenous Mestizos: The politics of race and culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  323. Analyzes the politics of identity in Cuzco while taking into account the dynamics of the regional context and the constant struggle for political identity. Shows how racial categories became redefined as cultural differences, associated with rural/urban place of residence, education, and manners, to justify social hierarchies and political and economic inequalities.
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  325. Dikötter, Frank, ed. 1997. The construction of racial identities in China and Japan: Historical and contemporary perspectives. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press.
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  327. Includes ten articles, exploring racial identity politics in China and Japan. Themes include, among others, the invention of the Han “race” to mobilize hatred against the Manchus in modern China and the emergence of the myth of Japanese racial superiority to assert Japan’s alleged right to leadership of the other Asian inhabitants of Manchukuo.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Gilroy, Paul. 1987. “There ain’t no black in the Union Jack”: The cultural politics of race and nation. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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  331. Explores the complexity of racial politics in Britain. Treats race as a social and political construct, and not in terms of cultural absolutes. Shows how mechanisms of inclusion in, and exclusion from, the national community are key concerns of the new racism. Argues that black Britain can be understood only as part of the black diaspora.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Kertzer, David I., and Dominique Arel, eds. 2002. Census and identity: The politics of race, ethnicity, and language in national censuses. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  335. Consists of seven chapters. Explores how colonial and modern states used censuses as a tool in the political struggle over collective identity formation and divided populations into identity categories along racial (and also ethnic and linguistic) lines for a range of political purposes, including the refusal to enfranchise blacks and Native Americans.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Mamdani, Mahmood. 2001. When victims become killers: Colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  338. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. Analyzes when and how the Hutu/Tutsi difference in Rwanda became racialized and the Tutsi were constructed as nonindigenous/settler Hamites, enjoying a privileged relationship to power, and the Hutu as indigenous/native Bantu. Argues that the construction of the Tutsi as a racialized minority shaped the postcolonial quest for justice, which turned into revenge.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Smedley, Audrey. 1999. Race in North America: Origin and evolution of a worldview. 2d ed. Boulder, CO: Westview.
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  343. Analyzes the fundamental features of race ideology, and the currency of this ideology since the 18th century, in American society. Shows how the concept of race has been applied strategically to create alleged innate and untranscendable differences and confer rights and privileges to some and not others. Originally published in 1993.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Stoler, Ann Laura. 1995. Race and the education of desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  347. Analyzes the making of bourgeois identity in 19th-century Europe by examining the articulations between discourses of sexuality and the politics of race, concerned with fixed notions of “whiteness” and “true” European-ness. Explores how race played a fundamental role in the politics of exclusion, including the denial of citizenship, property, and welfare rights.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Werbner, Prina, and Tariq Modood, eds. 1997. Debating cultural hybridity: Multi-Cultural identities and the politics of anti-racism. London: Zed Books.
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  351. Consists of fourteen essays, including an introduction. Examines how notions of hybridity and multiculturalism can be strategically employed in the context of race-based and anti-racist identity politics and struggles.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Gender
  354. Feminist anthropologists have moved away from an earlier preoccupation, especially pronounced in the 1970s, with the social construction of sexual differences and the prevalence of sexual asymmetry to a study of the many facets of gender politics, shedding light on the ways in which power and gender intersect and pervade society. Collier and Rosaldo 1981 is an early example, and di Leonardo 1991 provides a general overview of such approaches to the study of gender. Butler 1990raises significant questions related to the mobilization of feminism as an identity politics. Gal and Kligman 2000 attends to historical comparisons, and notes parallels and contrasts between east central Europe and other regions. Aretxaga 1997 sheds light on the articulation of gender politics and political violence. Yuval-Davis 1997 situates gender politics within the context of nations and nationalisms. Moghadam 1994 provides useful case studies that explore the politics of gender among various communities around the world. Ginsburg and Tsing 1990 and Ong and Peletz 1995also make important contributions.
  355. Aretxaga, Begoña. 1997. Shattering silence: Women, nationalism, and political subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
  356. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  357. Explores the conservative gender politics in postcolonial Ireland, which idealized traditional motherhood and rural tradition. Analyzes how nationalist women who became politically involved during the upheaval of the 1970s positioned themselves in this context, and the implications of their political tactics for nationalist resistance and gender relations.
  358. Find this resource:
  359. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
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  361. Rooted in what is widely known as French theory. Critically examines the foundational assumption upon which identity politics rests, namely the notion that identity must be in place before political action can be taken. Presents the theory of performativity, whereby our identities, gendered and otherwise, are the effect of our performances.
  362. Find this resource:
  363. Collier, Jane F., and Michelle Z. Rosaldo. 1981. Politics and gender in simple societies. InSexual meanings: The cultural construction of gender and sexuality. Edited by Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead, 275–329. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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  365. The authors propose a model for the study of inequalities between the sexes that takes into serious consideration structural inequalities organizing political and economic life. Focus on Australian Aborigines, American, Asian, and African hunter-gatherers and hunter-horticulturalists.
  366. Find this resource:
  367. di Leonardo, Micaela, ed. 1991. Gender at the crossroads of knowledge: Feminist anthropology in the postmodern era. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  369. Includes contributions from archaeology, linguistics, physical anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology. Examines, among other topics, the gender politics of colonial empires, gender as cultural politics, and representations of gendered labor.
  370. Find this resource:
  371. Gal, Susan, and Gail Kligman. 2000. The politics of gender after socialism: A comparative-historical essay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  373. The authors explore the key role that gender discourses and practices play in the social and institutional transformations unfolding in countries of east central Europe after the collapse of communism. They illuminate how states and processes of political and economic change are gendered and also how states and labor markets regulate gender relations.
  374. Find this resource:
  375. Ginsburg, Faye, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, eds. 1990. Uncertain terms: Negotiating gender in American culture. Boston: Beacon.
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  377. Consists of an introduction and nineteen essays. Explores how people with particular and oftentimes conflicting interests debate and redefine gender categories, and how individuals cope with institutions promoting particular ideas about sex differences. Also examines how gender gains power in various discourses, such as the discourse of scientific language and institutions.
  378. Find this resource:
  379. Moghadam, Valentine M., ed. 1994. Identity politics and women: Cultural reassertions and feminisms in international perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview.
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  381. An interdisciplinary volume. Consists of twenty-one essays. Topics include, among others, gender as an ethno-marker in the former Yugoslavia, gender and political mobilization in Sudan, and gender politics among newly Orthodox Jewish women in the United States.
  382. Find this resource:
  383. Ong, Aihwa, and Michael G. Peletz, eds. 1995. Bewitching women, pious men: Gender and body politics in Southeast Asia. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  385. Based on a conference held at the University of California, Berkeley, in the winter of 1992. Contains an introduction and nine essays. Introduces new ways of studying how gender articulates with power, nationalism, and capitalism in Southeast Asia and beyond.
  386. Find this resource:
  387. Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. Gender and Nation. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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  389. Sheds light on the intersections of gender and nation. Argues that constructions of nationhood cannot be understood without paying attention to the specific notions of “manhood” and “womanhood” such constructions involve.
  390. Find this resource:
  391. Sexuality
  392. Anthropological work on the politics of sexual orientation is generally concerned with analyzing constructions and oftentimes contestations of so-called non-normative sexualities, transgenderisms, and queerness, the larger context of power relationships within which such constructions and contestations emerge, and the implications they hold for various sociopolitical projects. Weston 1991and Lewin 1996 are among the first investigations of this kind. Rubin 2011 is a collection of profoundly influential and insightful writing about the politics of sexuality. Beemyn 1997 is an important example of interdisciplinary work. Johnson 1997, Bunzl 2004, and Boellstorff 2005 make significant theoretical contributions. Valentine 2007 serves as an important example of work that is recently emerging in the study of the politics of transgender identity. Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan IV 2002 casts special light on the dynamics of globalization.
  393. Beemyn, Brett, ed. 1997. Creating a place for ourselves: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual community histories. New York: Routledge.
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  395. Explores, among other topics, strategies of everyday resistance, activists’ use of a discourse on patriotism and citizenship to advance political aims, bar communities and the struggle for public recognition and acceptance, and the role the tensions between openness and repression played in the politicization of gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities across America.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Boellstorff, Tom. 2005. The gay archipelago: Sexuality and nation in Indonesia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  399. Analyzes the links between gay and lesbian subject positions and national discourse. Argues that gay and lesbians Indonesians understand their social worlds in national terms and represent the most accurate example of national subjectivities produced by the postcolonial Indonesian state. Introduces the notions of dubbing culture and archipelagic subjectivities and socialities.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Bunzl, Matti. 2004. Symptoms of modernity: Jews and queers in late-twentieth-century Vienna. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  403. A comparative ethnography. Analyzes the abject identification and systematic exclusion of Jews and homosexuals in the context of the constitution of the modern nation-state and the cultural logic of modernity, and the emergence of both groups into Vienna’s public sphere by the 1990s as a signpost of postmodernity.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Cruz-Malavé, Arnaldo, and Martin F. Manalansan IV, eds. 2002. Queer globalizations: Citizenship and the afterlife of colonialism. New York: New York Univ. Press.
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  407. An interdisciplinary volume. Considers the tensions, and the position of queer sexualities and cultures as a mediating force, between the local and the global. Interrogates the appropriation of queer subjectivities for the legitimation of hegemonic projects, the complexities generated for queer politics in the context of globalizing forces, and queer struggles for justice and liberty.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Johnson, Mark. 1997. Beauty and power: Transgendering and cultural transformation in the southern Philippines. Oxford: Berg.
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  411. Analyzes the emergence of transgenderally identified men as the producers of an image of beauty, their stigmatization, and attempts to combat sexual prejudice. Argues that although they generate classifications, various forms of sexuality unfold within discourses cutting across national boundaries. Suggests that sexual ambiguity is the product of historical relations of power and resistance.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Lewin, Ellen, ed. 1996. Inventing lesbian cultures in America. Boston: Beacon.
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  415. Consists of an introduction and eight chapters. Suggests that, to understand the solidification of lesbian identity, we must consider identity politics and the processes through which ideas about community, nation, tradition, and history are formed. Explores ways in which people can use a particular idea of lesbian to invent notions of community and belonging.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Rubin, Gayle S. 2011. Deviations: A Gayle Rubin reader. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  419. Consists of an introduction and seven essays, dealing with issues related to gender, sexuality, power, politics, institutions, and accompanying persistent inequalities. Topics include, among others, gay male leather communities, butch/femme roles, and antiporn politics.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Valentine, David. 2007. Imagining transgender: An ethnography of a category. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  423. Analyzes the emergence and institutionalization of transgender as a category of collective identity, scholarly analysis, and political activism since the early 1990s in the contemporary United States. Considers the role of gay and lesbian activism since the 1970s, feminism, and psychiatry. Explores the negative consequences for gender-variant poor people of color.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Weston, Kath. 1991. Families we choose: Lesbians, gays, kinship. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
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  427. Discusses how lesbians and gays build families in contemporary American society. Explores the tensions over the legitimacy of gay families and over the kinship character of the social ties these families build. Considers the political implications of a discourse on gay kinship, including the contested debate on the assimilation of gay families into a heterosexual model.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Multiculturalism
  430. Multicultural politics emerged in the late 20th century as various social groups used the concepts of “culture” and “identity” to assert difference and ameliorate their condition. Anthropologists studying such phenomena have often been concerned with the making and meaning of culture, and Baumann 1999 and Turner 1993 represent such examples. Bhabha 1994 offers a perspective that carries far-reaching implications. Taylor 1992, by political philosopher Charles Taylor, is well known and well cited. Modood and Werbner 1997 offers a critical exploration of the politics of multiculturalism in the new Europe specifically, and Douglas 2000 illustrates worrisome political trends. Grillo 1998 offers useful comparative insights. Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010 examines recent developments concerning the backlash against multiculturalism since the early 2000s.
  431. Baumann, Gerd. 1999. The multicultural riddle: Rethinking national, ethnic, and religious identities. New York: Routledge.
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  433. Argues that multiculturalism is the practice, as distinguished from the theory, of culture applied to oneself and to others. Rethinks the meaning of nationality, ethnicity, and religion as a basis of culture to understand better struggles for justice and equality. Focuses on North America and America. Contains recommendations for further reading.
  434. Find this resource:
  435. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The location of culture. New York: Routledge.
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  437. A collection of twelve essays. Argues against a (multicultural) model of culture based on the concept of cultural diversity, which encourages us to view cultures as homogeneous, and favors the concept of cultural difference, which focuses attention on the ambivalence of authority. Introduces highly influential concepts, such as hybridity and mimicry.
  438. Find this resource:
  439. Douglas, Holmes R. 2000. Integral Europe: Fast-Capitalism, multiculturalism, neofascism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  441. Discusses the politicization of identity in debates on a multicultural Europe and on the conditions of belonging. Analyzes integralism as a kind of politics that frames representations of human difference and its distinctive power. Examines how some populist political leaders in Europe politicize integralist fears and aspirations to pursue their own ends.
  442. Find this resource:
  443. Grillo, Ralph. 1998. Pluralism and the politics of difference: State, culture, and ethnicity in comparative perspective. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
  444. DOI: 10.1093/0198294263.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  445. Views multiculturalism as one kind of pluralism. Comparatively explores the shaping and (re)production of difference across time and space in plural societies. Considers three configurations of state and society, namely, preindustrial, modern, and post-industrial.
  446. Find this resource:
  447. Modood, Tariq, and Pnina Werbner, eds. 1997. The politics of multiculturalism in the new Europe: Racism, identity and community. London: Zed Books.
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  449. Consists of fourteen chapters, including an introduction and afterword, exploring issues relating to, among others, inclusion, exclusion, immigration, and citizenship. The contributors argue that multiculturalism is the political outcome of power struggles and negotiations of cultural, ethnic, and racial differences.
  450. Find this resource:
  451. Taylor, Charles. 1992. Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”: An essay. With commentary by Amy Gutmann, editor, and Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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  453. Explores how the discourse of recognition, which comes to the fore in the politics of multiculturalism, has become familiar to us. Analyzes the politics of universal dignity, concerned with the establishment of rights and immunities that are universally the same, and the politics of difference, concerned with the recognition of the distinctness of an individual or group.
  454. Find this resource:
  455. Turner, Terence. 1993. Anthropology and multiculturalism: What is anthropology that multiculturalists should be mindful of it? Cultural Anthropology 8.4: 411–429.
  456. DOI: 10.1525/can.1993.8.4.02a00010Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  457. Argues that for multiculturalists the concepts of culture and ethnic identity become merged and the term culture refers to groups with distinctive social identities engaging in struggles for social equality. Suggests anthropologists contribute to multiculturalist thinking and practice an understanding of the relation of multiculturalism itself to the conditions of the contemporary conjuncture.
  458. Find this resource:
  459. Vertovec, Steven, and Susanne Wessendorf, eds. 2010. The multiculturalism backlash: European discourses, policies and practices. New York: Routledge.
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  461. Provides a multidisciplinary approach. The contributors explore multiculturalism in combination with issues pertaining to immigration in Europe and examine public debates and policies concerned with access to power and opportunities.
  462. Find this resource:
  463. Indigeneity
  464. Contrary to assumptions made by many Western thinkers in the past, indigenous peoples have become neither extinct nor assimilated into the so-called mainstream. Rather, they have confidently and forcefully claimed their places in today’s world while pursuing their own and varied interests and visions of the future. Many anthropologists working on issues pertaining to the politics of indigeneity highlight the heterogeneity of indigenous experience, as evidenced in de la Cadena and Starn 2007. Several works have critically attended to an analysis of the social and political construction of indigenous identity and difference, as seen in Merlan 2009 and also in Sturm 2002 and Sturm 2011.Postero 2007 and Povinelli 2002 exemplify a concern with (neo)liberal multiculturalism, as relates to indigenous peoples, while Hodgson 2002 and Speed 2008 represent a preoccupation with indigenous rights.
  465. de la Cadena, Marisol, and Orin Starn, eds. 2007. Indigenous experience today. New York: Berg.
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  467. Explores the politics of indigeneity in, among other countries, Australia, Botswana, Canada, Chile, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States. Themes include, but are not limited to, territory and questions of sovereignty, the boundary politics of indigeneity, and indigenous self-representation and the politics of knowledge.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Hodgson, Dorothy L. 2002. Introduction: Comparative perspectives on the indigenous rights movement in Africa and the Americas. American Anthropologist 104.4: 1037–1049.
  470. DOI: 10.1525/aa.2002.104.4.1037Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. An introduction to a set of “In Focus” articles on indigenous rights movements in Africa and the Americas. The articles address, among other questions, the cultural politics of inclusion and exclusion and offer a comparative perspective on the issues of power, representation, and difference that are involved in the production of the transnational indigenous rights movement.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Merlan, Francesca. 2009. Indigeneity: Global and local. Current Anthropology 50.3: 303–333.
  474. DOI: 10.1086/597667Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. Explores, among other issues, debates surrounding the definition of “indigenous people,” the internationalization of the indigenous category, and the rejection of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by Australia, the United States, Canada, and New Zealand.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Postero, Nancy Grey. 2007. Now we are citizens: Indigenous politics in postmulticultural Bolivia. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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  479. Examines the emergence of new forms of politics in Bolivia, whereby indigenous citizens reacted against the limitations of state-sponsored multiculturalism and neoliberal reforms, which reinforced exclusion from political participation and racialized inequalities, and helped to make possible the election of Evo Morales, the first indigenous person to become Bolivia’s president.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2002. The cunning of recognition: Indigenous alterities and the making of Australian multiculturalism. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  483. Based on fieldwork among Aboriginal people living in the Northern Territory of Australia. Examines how the Australian state addresses aboriginal issues. Sheds light on the limits of liberal multiculturalism in recognizing difference and on the subsequent perpetuation of inequalities of power.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Speed, Shannon. 2008. Rights in rebellion: Indigenous struggle and human rights in Chiapas. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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  487. Explores how social actors in Chiapas mobilize, and redefine on the basis of their own experiences, the global discourse of human rights to pursue their political goals. Analyzes the implications of such practices for neoliberal discourses and structures of power.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Sturm, Circe. 2002. Blood politics: Race, culture, and identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
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  491. Combines ethnography and ethno-history. Analyzes the key role of the social categories of blood, race, and color, which shape discourses of social belonging in the United States, in the construction of Cherokee identity. Explains the racial politics of 19th-century Cherokee nationalism and the course toward Cherokee nationhood in the 20th century.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Sturm, Circe. 2011. Becoming Indian: The struggle over Cherokee identity in the twenty-first century. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research.
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  495. Focuses on what the author calls “racial shifters,” individuals who have over the past thirty years changed their racial self-identification on the US census from non-Indian to Indian. Explores the motivations of Americans who reclaim their Indianness. Analyzes the changing nature of the politics of race and indigeneity in America.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Diasporas and Globalization
  498. Anthropologists are increasingly interested in exploring identity politics in the contemporary era of globalization, especially among diasporic populations including migrants, refugees, and exiles.Appadurai 1996 and Ong 1999 provide compelling frameworks for critically understanding identity politics in the present era of globalization. Friedman 1994, Silverstein 2004, and Lavie and Swedenburg 1996 represent investigations of the formation of political subjectivities across different localities and through multiple genres. Geschiere 2009 interrogates the political project of belonging under globalization. Clifford 1994 offers an exploration of the various issues surrounding invocations of diaspora and formations of transnational identity. Basch, et al. 1994 broadens scholarly discussion by focusing on identity politics among transmigrant populations.
  499. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
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  501. Illuminates the work of the imagination in the era of mass mediation, migration, and globalization and argues that cultural differences tend to take the form of culturalism, understood as identity politics that is mobilized at the nation-state level.
  502. Find this resource:
  503. Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations unbound: Transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments, and deterritorialized nation-states. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach.
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  505. The authors focus on populations whose social networks, daily activities, cultural practices, and ideologies span their home nation-states and the host societies. Explores competitions over the identities and political allegiances of transmigrants and also the ways in which transmigrants position themselves vis-à-vis state policies and practices.
  506. Find this resource:
  507. Clifford, James. 1994. Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology 9.3: 302–338.
  508. DOI: 10.1525/can.1994.9.3.02a00040Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  509. Argues that diaspora discourses articulate cosmopolitanisms that are in tension with ideologies of the nation-state and with indigenous and autochthonous claims. Examines the currency of diaspora discourses and the political significance of diasporic practices.
  510. Find this resource:
  511. Friedman, Jonathan. 1994. Cultural identity and global process. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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  513. Observes the proliferation of a politics of cultural identity, specifically the production of new identities, social categories and political groups, from the mid-1970s onward. Views the practice of identification as a question of global systems, defined as hierarchical articulations of different structures and strategies of reproduction.
  514. Find this resource:
  515. Geschiere, Peter. 2009. The perils of belonging: Autochthony, citizenship, and exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  516. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226289663.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  517. Integrates material from Africa and Europe (and also classical Greece). Analyzes struggles over issues of autochthony and exclusion in the contemporary context of globalization. Suggests that we view autochthony claims as determined by specific histories and changing politico-economic circumstances. Focuses also on the importance of ritual in explaining the mobilizing capacity of autochthony claims.
  518. Find this resource:
  519. Lavie, Smadar, and Ted Swedenburg, eds. 1996. Displacement, diaspora, and geographies of identity. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  521. Contains ten essays. Underscores the emergence of multiple subject positions that are historically grounded. Deals with diasporic subjects, including minority groups and recent immigrants, who confront adversity (for example, the circumscription of local/ national culture and external rigid categorizations) by asserting their hybrid identities.
  522. Find this resource:
  523. Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.
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  525. Uses the concept of flexible citizenship to analyze individuals’ opportunistic search for overseas citizenship that will facilitate their quest to accumulate capital and social prestige. Introduces the concept of graduated sovereignty to analyze the transformations in the nature of sovereignty, and the implications for the claims subjects can make on state power.
  526. Find this resource:
  527. Silverstein, Paul A. 2004. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, race, and nation. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
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  529. Analyzes how Algerian and Franco-Algerian political subjectivities are produced and consumed in France. Explores, among other themes, the colonial reification of the Berber/Arab divide and the ways in which it has conditioned postcolonial identity politics, and spatializing practices and their formative effects on the production of Algerian subjectivity.
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