Identity (Anthropology)

Lineal Masculinity: Gendered Memory within Patriliny

by Diane E. King

King, Diane E. and Linda Stone 2010 Lineal Masculinity: Gendered Memory within Patriliny. American Ethnologist 37(2):323-336.

In this article, we present a model of gender within patrilineal descent for a broad region covering Asia, Europe, and... more In this article, we present a model of gender within patrilineal descent for a broad region covering Asia, Europe, and North Africa. We develop the concept of "lineal masculinity," a perceived ontological essence that flows to and through men over the generations. It is especially expressed through people's notions of the past, present, and future of their patrilineages. We elaborate lineal masculinity in terms of male achievement, lineage founders, lineage segmentation, and male reproduction. Our model offers cross-cultural analysis and so provides an alternative to the position of strong cultural relativism in kinship and gender studies. [patriliny, masculinity, lineage theory, kinship, gender, identity, memory]

Back from the “Outside”: Returnees and Diasporic Imagining in Iraqi Kurdistan

by Diane E. King

King, Diane E. 2008 Back from the “Outside”: Returnees and Diasporic Imagining in Iraqi Kurdistan. International Journal on Multicultural Societies 10(2)

Iraqi Kurdistan is a “homeland” for a growing diaspora of Kurdish people living throughout the West. In this article I... more Iraqi Kurdistan is a “homeland” for a growing diaspora of Kurdish people living throughout the West. In this article I argue for return migrants’ narratives about life in the West as a constitutive element of a Kurdish diasporic imaginary in the homeland itself in addition to in the West. The first significant numbers of Kurds to out-migrate were mainly young men who fled the 1975 collapse of the Kurdish rebellion against the central government in which many of their peers perished. Most settled in Europe and the United States. Theirs was probably the last generation of Iraqi Kurdish out-migrants to experience a thorough rupture from their past that was sustained by Iraq’s ongoing political unrest, totalitarianism, and relatively sealed borders. This changed dramatically in 1991 when the Kurdish region of Iraq became functionally independent from Baghdad. Thousands of migrants left Iraqi Kurdistan (now known officially as the Kurdistan Region) for the West during the following decade. During the same period, Kurds who had migrated to the West in both the present and previous decades returned, most on short-term visits. Throngs of neighbours, friends and kin peppered each returnee with questions and listened raptly to accounts of life in the West, which they referred to simply as “the outside.” These encounters instilled those remaining “inside” with a new communal consciousness formulated vis-à-vis the West. This and accompanying political and technological changes have resulted in Iraqi Kurds’ becoming a diasporic people even though most have never left “home.”

Middle Eastern Belongings: Impositions, Ironies, Bodies, Lands

by Diane E. King

King, Diane E. 2008 Middle Eastern Belongings: Impositions, Ironies, Bodies, Lands. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 15(3):261-270.

Soziale Grenzen - Ein Exkurs zur Frage räumlicher Identitätsgruppen in der Prähistorie.

by Johannes Müller

J. Müller (2005), Soziale Grenzen und Zeichensysteme in prähistorischen Gesellschaften. In: T. L. Kienlin (Hrsg.), Die Dinge als Zeichen: Kulturelles Wissen und materielle Kultur. Universitätsforschungen zur prähistorischen Archäologie 127 (Bonn 2005) 255-62.

Participation in sport: bonding and bridging as identity work

by Jeroen Vermeulen

«А остяки – они же любители одиночеств…»: Этническая идентичность и этнические стереотипы у населения р. Демьянка в ХХ-ХХI вв.

by Vladimir Adaev

Investigative Management and Consumer Research on the Internet

by Peter Lugosi

A final version of this paper will be published as Lugosi, P., Janta, H. and Watson, P. (2012) Investigative Management and Consumer Research on the Internet. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Vol. 24, No. 6. Please consult the final published version if citing.

This paper introduces the notion of Investigative Research on the Internet (IRI) and conceptualises its processes... more This paper introduces the notion of Investigative Research on the Internet (IRI) and conceptualises its processes through the principle of streaming. It discusses the similarities and differences between IRI and netnography and considers various aspects of the IRI process, including site selection, sampling, data collection and analysis. It is argued that streaming can help to understand the processes involved in conducting netnographic research. Moreover, it is suggested that streaming is a more appropriate way to conceptualise some internet-based studies that do not conform to netnographic or ethnographic ideals. Three international empirical cases are used to illustrate the application of IRI and streaming in research on international workers, consumer cultures and on emerging business phenomena.

Purity and Threat: Rethinking the Mandaeans' Religiosity

by Mehrdad Arabestani

(2011): Farhang-e Mardom:Iranian Folklore Quaterly, No. 37, 38, pp. 53-74 (in Persian)

ABSTRACT
The Mandaeans are members of an ethno-religion living in Iran and Iraq. They are bearers of a Gnostic... more ABSTRACT
The Mandaeans are members of an ethno-religion living in Iran and Iraq. They are bearers of a Gnostic tradition that makes their main identity reference. Being a small, local, endogamous group under non-Mandaeans hegemony, they have always been under the threat of cultural extinction. The concern for group identity is well reflected in the Mandaeans’ religiosity. The Mandaeans practice a doctrinal ritualistic religion with the recurrent theme of purity. This doctrinal ritualistic religion allows them to transmit complex networks of religious codes through generations and establish and re-establish the Mandaean identity. Simultaneously, the obsession with bodily purity symbolically shows their preoccupation with the unity and integrity of the threatened group boundaries. During last decades, the Mandaeans’ homeland has gone under dramatic political and social changes, that have led to the Mandaeans’ emigration and formation of the Mandaeans diasporas all around the world. These new social conditions are making an unprecedented effect on the Mandaeans’ mode of religious practice and could be regarded as a turning point in the Mandaeans’ historical experience.

KEY WORDS:
Purity, Cosmology, Ritual, Identity, Threat

L’adozione dell’identità assira da una parte della Chiesa siro-orientale, il genocidio del 1915 e la diaspora

by Alessandro Mengozzi

Il contributo è stato presentato alla XXXIII Settimana europea della Fondazione Ambrosiana Paolo VI – Storia Religiosa Euro-Mediterranea 2. “Dal Mediterraneo al Mar della Cina. L’irradiazione della tradizione cristiana di Antiochia nel continente asiatico e nel suo universo religioso”, Gazzada 6-10 settembre 2011, i cui atti sono in corso di pubblicazione.

Chiesa martire e dal glorioso passato missionario, minoranza cristiana sradicata con brutale violenza dal brandello di... more Chiesa martire e dal glorioso passato missionario, minoranza cristiana sradicata con brutale violenza dal brandello di terra nel quale si era dovuta ritirare, gli assiri dimostrano ancora oggi di saper mettere feconde radici ovunque si trovino, in tutti gli angoli del pianeta. Nazione senza uno stato, gruppo etnico senza un territorio in cui possa essere maggioritario, decimata nel primo genocidio del XX secolo, tradita e perseguitata, la comunità assira dispersa in tutto il mondo si è ripiegata, forse in qualche misura intrappolata, in un’identità etnica che trae ispirazione dalla Mesopotamia antica. Coltiva il sogno di un improbabile ritorno dello splendore antico, variamente mitizzato, o progetta politicamente la creazione di una regione autonoma assira nell’Iraq settentrionale. Cerca di sperimentare vie non soltanto religiose, ma anche laiche e politiche, per la costruzione di un’identità nazionale forte e unitaria.

Theorizing the Space of Literacy Practices

by Lesley Bartlett

Identitats ambivalents: estudi comparatiu de sistemes de classificació social

by Montserrat Clua i Fainé

Co-authored with Verena Stolcke, Montserrat Ventura, Alexandre Coello, Mònica Martínez, Josep Lluís Mateo, Joan Muela, Maite Ojeda, Salvador Queralt, Alexandre Surrallés

Culture of violence or violent Orientalism? Neoliberalisation and imagining the 'savage other' in post-transitional Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2009. Culture of violence or violent Orientalism? Neoliberalisation and imagining the "savage other" in post-transitional Cambodia. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 34 (3), 305-319.

Violence and authoritarianism continue to resonate in Cambodia’s post-transitional landscape, leading many scholars,... more Violence and authoritarianism continue to resonate in Cambodia’s post-transitional landscape, leading many scholars, journalists, international donors and non-governmental organisations alike to posit a ‘culture of violence’ as responsible for the country’s democratic deficit and enduring violence. In contrast, this paper interprets the culture of violence thesis as a sweeping caricature shot through with Orientalist imaginaries, and a problematic discourse that underwrites the process of neoliberalisation. The culture of violence argument is considered to invoke particular imaginative geographies that problematically erase the contingency, fluidity and interconnectedness of the places in which violence occurs. While violence is certainly mediated through both culture and place, following Doreen Massey’s re-conceptualisation of space and place, this paper understands place not as a confined and isolated unit, but as a relational constellation within the wider experiences of space. This reflection allows us to recognise that any seemingly local, direct or cultural expression of violence is necessarily imbricated in the wider, structural patterns of violence, which in the current moment of political economic orthodoxy increasingly suggests a relationship to neoliberalism. Through the adoption of the culture of violence discourse, neoliberalisation is argued to proceed in the Cambodian context as a ‘civilising’ enterprise, where Cambodians are subsequently imagined as ‘savage others’.

What are we talking about when we talk about identities?

by José Bastos

co-authored with S. Bastos

"L’Uno contro l’uno. Processi di costruzione di identità e ideologia nell’Ōmotokyō" ("The One against the one. Processes of Construction of Identity and Ideology in Ōmotokyō")

by Andrea De Antoni

Published in Atti del XXX convegno di studi sul Giappone (Lecce, Settembre 2006), Associazione Italiana per gli Studi Giapponesi AISTUGIA (ed.), Galatina Congedo Editore, Lecce, 2008: 157-172. (In Italian)

“Fields of Ghosts. Making Meaning of Religious Narratives, Locality and Memory in Contemporary Mutsu.”

by Andrea De Antoni

In De Antoni, Andrea, Christopher Feldman, and John W. Traphagan (eds.). Death Rituals in Contemporary Japan (Working Title). Expected 2012.

“Clashes of Memories at the Museum of Hell. Religious Narratives, Conflict and Re-production of “Tradition” in Tateyama Ashikuraji.”

by Andrea De Antoni

In Raveri, Massimo (ed.). The Memory of the Future Faiths: Religious Strategies in Constructing Oblivion and Remembering in East Asia. Rome: Bulzoni. Expected 2012.

“More than an Ethnic Marker: Toraja Art as Identity Negotiator.”

by Kathleen Adams

(1998) American Ethnologist. 25(3):327-351.

In this article I suggest that art can be more than a passive ethnic marker. Focusing on the architecturally based... more In this article I suggest that art can be more than a passive ethnic marker. Focusing on the architecturally based carvings of the Toraja of Indonesia, I argue that artistic forms are sites for the assertion, articulation, and negotiation of various hierarchical identities and relationships. I trace the contested transformation of Toraja architectural symbols of elite authority into generalized icons of Toraja ethnic identity. As I chronicle these shifts I also illustrate how Toraja architectural carvings serve as vehicles for the rearticulation of assorted sets of rank, ethnic, regional, and political relationships. A key objective in this article is to highlight the complicated and often ironic relations between material culture, identity negotiation, and human agency. Drawing on Scott (1985, 1990), I suggest that while art may serve as a weapon of the weak, it can also be a weak weapon. [identity, art, ethnicity, tourism, agency, Indonesia, Toraja]

Construire une Identité: pour l'Autre ou contre Lui, Rôle de l'Education

by Georges NAHAS

Nahas, G. N. (16 - 18 octobre 2008). Contruire une Identité: pour l'Autre ou contre Lui, Rôle de l'Education. In Trois Religions, Un Seul Homme, Université Saint-Esprit - Kaslik. Kaslik. Lebanon.

Une identité est-elle nécessairement intrinsèque ou peut-elle être considéré comme une réalisation de soi pour l’Autre... more Une identité est-elle nécessairement intrinsèque ou peut-elle être considéré comme une réalisation de soi pour l’Autre et par Lui ? L’objectif de cette intervention est de montrer que l’appartenance religieuse est ontologiquement libératrice ; l’utiliser pour définir une identité introvertie est une déformation de la Nature Humaine et qui va à l’encontre de l’Harmonie Universelle.

Pour ce faire, cette intervention se penchera sur des textes « prophétiques » des livres saints et de grands penseurs humanistes toute appartenance religieuse confondue. L’Homme convergence des deux infinis est pressenti comme créature sociale par excellence, prêtre de l’Univers, et point focal de toute communication source d’harmonie (ou de conflit).

Former à cette conception de l’Homme et de l’Humain, exige une transcendance tout azimut des formats éducatifs qui prévalent tout en soulignant la différence de fond entre l’éducation religieuse dogmatisante et la formation libératrice de l’Homme religieux.

Another Side of Clare Savage’s Identity Crisis: A Queer Theoretical Analysis of Michelle Cliff’s Abeng

by Michael Carosone

Geoffrey Chaucer: Feminist Or Not?

by Michael Carosone