Showing papers in "Ethnos in 1995"
TL;DR: The debate on critical history has taken on a new dimension in recent years, challenging the very status of history as a privileged, objective discourse as discussed by the authors, and practitioners of other disciplines have used the "voice from the edge" and the "fragmentary statement" to disturb the totalizing and normalizing character of historical writing.
Abstract: The debate on critical history has taken on a new dimension in recent years, challenging the very status of history’ as a privileged, objective discourse. Historians, and practitioners of other disciplines, have used the ‘voice from the edge’, and the ‘fragmentary statement’ to disturb the totalizing and normalizing character of historical writing. Other historians have condemned this disturbing of the ‘centre’, of the inherited form of historical narrative and of well‐established objects of investigation, for its nihilism and its ‘absolute’ relativism. The following article returns to this debate with some reflections based on materials drawn mainly from India.
56 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the position of voice as standing beside culture in a manner similar to Wittgensteins notion of the soul standing beside the body and meaning standing next to the word, and shows that the weaving of voice into the everyday concerns of cultural meanings enables us to see a kind of healing that allows the "souling" of culture.
Abstract: This article examines the position of voice as standing beside culture in a manner similar to Wittgensteins notion of the soul standing beside the body and meaning standing next to the word. While the article takes off from the realm of the imaginary in which the figure of the woman standing between the zone of two deaths is privileged since it draws forceful attention to uniqueness of being, it dwells at length in the realm of everyday life. Here it is shown that it is for the patient work of the repair of relationships within which poisonous knowledge has entered. The weaving of voice into the everyday concerns of cultural meanings enables us to see a kind of healing that allows the ‘souling’ of culture.
29 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the global mediatization of the trauma of political violence and its moral implications, and describe the professional appropriation of suffering that transforms political economic conditions into medical realities.
Abstract: Veena Das's work on suffering suggests that the appropriate approach to the subject is one that grounds research in social experience. To honor this pitch of anthropology, I examine the global mediatization of the trauma of political violence and its moral implications. I also describe the professional appropriation of suffering that transforms political economic conditions into medical realities. Because social experience is itself undergoing a profound alteration in the present period of disordered capitalism, the very phenomenological conditions that we have assumed as an ‘existential’ basis for responding to human misery are also being ominously transformed.
24 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the life histories of two young activists in order to comment on methodological approaches to exploring the world of youths, to ask how far we have come in catching their voices and experiences, and to comment that we have still to go.
Abstract: The article is centred on a concern with limitations in our knowledge of youth's life experiences. I pose questions about the nature and implications of accounts of childhood by tracing ideas in early ethnographies and comparing these with my own attempts to frame youth differently. Using ideas of heroism and narrative, I examine the life histories of two young activists in order to comment on methodological approaches to exploring the world of youths, to ask how far we have come in catching their voices and experiences, and to comment on how far we have still to go.
23 citations
TL;DR: The Buna Qalla ceremony is a central ritual practice of the Oromo peoples of East Africa as discussed by the authors, and in the case of the Muslim Waso Boorana the ritual has been transferred to a domestic sphere of local settlements.
Abstract: The Buna Qalla ceremony is a central ritual practice of the Oromo peoples of East Africa. In the case of the Muslim Waso Boorana the ritual has been transferred to a domestic sphere of local settlements. It is in that context that the ritual can be related to public statements of Boorana identity, and the social importance of women; the ritual being performed so as to create communal ties and to instruct younger generations on the Waso Boorana religious past and traditions. This article explores such ritual statements in the context of the historical and religious changes of the Waso Boorana since 1934.
6 citations
TL;DR: The notion of anthropological participation in the field, trying to draw together the recent writings of the anthropology of experience and those of cognitive anthropology, has been explored in this paper, where it is argued that our understanding of the people we study can be enhanced by sharing their life in a sympathetic and unreserved way: participant observation becomes "experiencing participation".
Abstract: The article deals with the notion of anthropological participation in the field, trying to draw together the recent writings of the anthropology of experience and those of cognitive anthropology. Both imply that our understanding of the people we study can be enhanced by sharing their life in a sympathetic and unreserved way: ‘participant observation’ becomes ‘experiencing participation’. This involves socialization in their systems of meanings and participation in the dynamic process of the construction of these meanings in which they are engaged. These ideas are illustrated by the ethnography of the sweat‐lodge, a ceremonial practice borrowed from Native American cultures and used by contemporary urban shamans in today's Sweden.
6 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored nineteenth-century British travel writings about Iceland and the importance of literary representation as a socially constitutive force, and found that Iceland emerges as the representations of a vast colonial power, seeking to embrace the island in its Romantic conceptualization of the remote North, so integral to the imagining of British national identity.
Abstract: This article explores nineteenth‐century British travel writings about Iceland and the importance of literary representation as a socially constitutive force. In the accounts of Richard Burton and William Morris, Iceland emerges as the representations of a vast colonial power, seeking to embrace the island in its Romantic conceptualization of the remote North, so integral to the imagining of British national identity. Given the roots of ethnographic writing in such accounts, examination of the nineteenth‐century traveller as cultural interpreter and theorist reflects back on contemporary concerns regarding the inscription of other societies as a poetics of displacement.
5 citations
TL;DR: In the Andes, life cycle rituals are necessary for the physical, social and spiritual development of individuals and households as mentioned in this paper, and the change in status that an individual achieves through lifecycle rituals also has implications for the status of the members of his/her household and of other kin.
Abstract: In analysing life‐cycle rituals (rites of passage) it is important to consider not only the relationship between individuals and society, but also the role of the household. The change in status that an individual achieves through life‐cycle rituals also has implications for the status of the members of his/her household and of other kin. In the Andes, life‐cycle rituals are necessary for the physical, social and spiritual development of individuals and households. Analyses that exclusively associate physical development with ‘natural’ parents and social and spiritual development with godparents, ignore the complex relationship between the households of parents, children and godparents.
3 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that Tamils respond to the computer in ways that become fully comprehensible only when situated in the context of traditional Sri Lanka Tamil culture and the U. K. immigrant experience.
Abstract: In “The Second Self, Sherry Turkle depicts the computer as a physically opaque and evocative object. Like a Rorschach diagram, it encourages North American users to employ the computer as a means of self‐identification. Do people from other cultures respond to the computer in the same way? American responses take place in the context of American ideas about technology. In this study of Sri Lanka Tamil computer users in London, it was found that Tamils respond to the computer in ways that become fully comprehensible only when situated in the context of traditional Sri Lanka Tamil culture and the U. K. immigrant experience. This finding points the way toward a cultural theory of user appropriation of technology. It also raises doubts regarding the oft‐repeated thesis that the diffusion of advanced industrial technology will lead to world‐wide cultural homogeneity.
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the feasibility of creating a specific national culture in the face of an increasing internationalisation of culture, characterised by an intensified global flow of different culture elements.
Abstract: One of the major issues to be discussed in this paper is how local cultures reproduce themselves in the face of modernity, and how these developments affect the process of identity formation. What does this mean for the overall processes of national encompassment of the local cultures perse? Another and related set of important issues to be discussed is the feasibility of creating a specific national culture in the face of an increasing internationalisation of culture, characterised by an intensified global flow of different culture elements. The question is here: does this constitute an impetus towards a greater cultural diversity within the individual nation‐state, triggering a potential marginalisation of the latter as the future overall societal factor of cohesiveness? The paper closes with a discussion of what these two types of constraint mean for the creation of a national culture and thus ultimately for the integrity and legitimacy of the nation‐state.
2 citations
TL;DR: The authors discusses how the inhabitants of the Dutch island of Texel have renegotiated and articulated their identity within the context of processes of nation building and state formation in the Netherlands and shows that nationalisation of culture and localisation of identity are inextricably intertwined.
Abstract: Some anthropologists perceive an increasing nationalisation or even globalisation of cultures and identities. Others, however, stress that in many places villagers assert their right to a local identity. This article discusses how the inhabitants of the Dutch island of Texel have renegotiated and articulated their identity within the context of processes of nation building and state formation in the Netherlands. It aims to show that nationalisation of culture and localisation of identity are inextricably intertwined.