Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

This review surveys an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study. Ethnography moves from its conventional single-site location, contextualized by macro-constructions of a larger social order, such as the capitalist world system, to multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the “local” and the “global,” the “lifeworld” and the “system.” Resulting ethnographies are therefore both in and out of the world system. The anxieties to which this methodological shift gives rise are considered in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern. The emergence of multi-sited ethnography is located within new spheres of interdisciplinary work, including media studies, science and technology studies, and cultural studies broadly. Several “tracking” strategies that shape multi-site...

http://anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu/media/Course_files/anth-490-edward-h-hagen/marcus-1995-ethnography-in-of-the-world-system_the-emergence-of-multi-sited-ethnography.pdf

Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography

Erik Eriksen is a remarkable individual. He has no college degrees yet is Professor of Human Development at Harvard University. He came to psychology via art, which explains why the reader will find him painting contexts and backgrounds rather than stating dull facts and concepts. He has been a training psychoanalyst for many years as well as a perceptive observer of cultural and social settings and their effect on growing up. This is not just a book on childhood. It is a panorama of our society. Anxiety in young children, apathy in American Indians, confusion in veterans of war, and arrogance in young Nazis are scrutinized under the psychoanalytic magnifying glass. The material is well written and devoid of technical jargon. The theme of the volume is that it is human to have a long childhood which will leave a lifelong residue of emotional immaturity in man. Primitive groups and

Childhood and Society.

Preface I. On the Shoulders of Bakhtin and Vygotsky 1. The Woman Who Climbed Up the House 2. A Practice Theory of Self and Identity II. Placing Identity and Agency 3. Figured Worlds 4. Personal Stories in Alcoholics Anonymous 5. How Figured Worlds of Romance Become Desire III. Power and Privilege 6. Positional Identities 7. The Sexual Auction Block IV. The Space of Authoring 8. Authoring Selves 9. Mental Disorder, Identity, and Professional Discourse 10. Authoring Oneself as a Woman in Nepal V. Making Worlds 11. Play Worlds, Liberatory Worlds, and Fantasy Resources 12. Making Alternate Worlds in Nepal 13. Identity in Practice Notes References Credits Index

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Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds

This assumed isomorphism of space, place, and
culture results in some significant problems. First,
there is the issue of those who inhabit the border,
what Gloria Anzaldua calls the “narrow strip along
steep edges” of national boundaries. The fiction ofconclusion that a focus on people who live in the borders between dominant societies or nations (and here
borders is also a metaphor for people who identify, culturally, with more than one group) makes clear the fact
that differences between cultures come about not because of their isolation from each other, but because 
of their connections with each other. Such a conclusion also suggests that along with difference comes the
hierarchies of power. Culture is not only a concept that expresses difference between peoples, but also a
concept that masks the uneven power relations between peoples, and these uneven power relations can 
only exist through connection, rather than isolation.

/pdf/beyond-culture-space-identity-and-the-politics-of-difference-4crrliy8sd.pdf

Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference

Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism

Mexicans have been migrating to the United States in significant numbers for more than a hundred years. From the outset, the great majority of this migration has been temporary and circular. Contrary to popular opinion, people have generally come for periods ranging from a few months to a couple of years and then returned home (Cockcroft 1982; Cornelius 1979). Since the late 1960s, however, there has been a marked growth in settlement. While temporary migration continues to predominate, it has become increasingly common for people to stay for extended periods and to establish new homes north of the border (Chavez 1988; Cornelius, in press). How should we understand the experiences of these recent settlers? What kinds of influence have they faced, and how have they responded? More importantly, how should we theorize and conceptualize their relationship to the contexts in which they have lived? For more than forty years, the ethnographically based literature on Mexican migration has been dominated by two closely related tendencies.' First, migration in general has been analyzed

/pdf/making-sense-of-settlement-class-transformation-cultural-1pmrytujxw.pdf

Making Sense of Settlement: Class Transformation, Cultural Struggle, and Transnationalism among Mexican Migrants in the United States

Les etudes sur les identites des migrants aux Etats-Unis ont d'abord developpe le modele bipolaire (migrant retournant chez eux, migrant s'installant definitivement) et le concept d'identite localisee avant de presenter les images alternatives des espaces sociaux transnationaux et des affiliations multi-locales. La politique qui entoure le discours identitaire a suivi l'histoire du concept d'identite dont les idees cles actuellement sont la personnalite, la collectivite et la lutte sociale. Des liens etroits existent entre la logique et le discours identitaire et les projets hegemoniques bourgeois. Or la dependance envers les concepts d'organisations risquent de renforcer l'influence et le controle bourgeois. A partir du cas des migrants d'Aguililla (Michoacan) venus s'installer a Redwood City, l'A. montre le rapport entre l'identite collective et l'identite personnelle et presente la politique d'identification au Mexique et aux Etats-Unis

Roger Rouse

Papers

Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodernism

Making Sense of Settlement: Class Transformation, Cultural Struggle, and Transnationalism among Mexican Migrants in the United States

Questions of Identity: Personhood and collectivity in transnational migration to the United States