On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification explores the discursive spaces of our speaking position, or what has routinely been referred to in the literature as the poetics and politics of writing culture. At issue here are its problematic underlying notions of cultural identity, authorial subjectivity and postcolonial critique. Contrary to the widespread assumption that cultural studies and the social sciences share a common discourse of culture and society, Allen Chun argues that 'modern' disciplinary practices and axioms have in fact produced inherently incompatible theories. Anthropology's ethical relativism has also created obstacles for a critical theory of culture and society.

This provocative work offers an anthropological analysis of the phenomenon of political correctness, both as a general phenomenon of communication, in which associations in space and time take precedence over the content of what is communicated, and at specific critical historical conjunctures at which new elites attempt to redefine social reality. Focusing on the crises over the last thirty years of immigration and multiculturalist politics in Sweden, the book examines cases, some in which the author was himself involved, but also comparative material from other countries.

In 1999 Macao, previously a territory under Portuguese rule, was handed over to the People’s Republic of China and transformed into one of the gambling capitals of the world. These political and economic phenomena were accompanied by unprecedented social changes that, ultimately, have redefined the Macanese identity. This book is about the Macanese living in Portugal and their intimate social networks in loco and interactions with their counterparts in Macao and elsewhere in the diaspora, by the use of Internet. Memory and ambivalence, deeply associated with kinship, language, food and heritage, are the cornerstones of this research, which overturns colonial stereotypes and concepts of Macanese cultural purity.

This text explores how identities emerge, persist and change and which power resources are tapped in the course of this process.

Locality and Belonging provides an international overview of the close relationship between territory and cultural identity. The issue of 'belonging' has long been recognized as crucial to the study of identity within anthropology. Here, contributors from Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France and the UK present rigorous case studies of 'belonging' from the UK, South Africa, Argentina, Zanzibar, Amazonia, Indonesia and West Africa. Among the themes explored are: * space, memory and ethnicity * the mnemonic use of objects * mythologies of football and history * use of 'natural features' of the environment * nationhood and post-colonial identity making.

Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity challenges conventional understandings of identity based on notions of nation and culture as bounded or discrete. Through careful examinations of various transnational, hybrid, border, and diasporic forces and practices, these essays push at the edge of cultural studies, postmodernism, and postcolonial theory and raise crucial questions about ethnographic methodology. This volume exemplifies a cross-disciplinary cultural studies and a concept of culture rooted in lived experience as well as textual readings. Anthropologists and scholars from related fields deploy a range of methodologies and styles of writing to blur and complicate conventional dualisms between authors and subjects of research, home and away, center and periphery, and first and third world. Essays discuss topics such as Rai, a North African pop music viewed as westernized in Algeria and as Arab music in France; the place of Sephardic and Palestinian writers within Israel’s Ashkenazic-dominated arts community; and the use and misuse of the concept “postcolonial” as it is applied in various regional contexts. In exploring histories of displacement and geographies of identity, these essays call for the reconceptualization of theoretical binarisms such as modern and postmodern, colonial and postcolonial. It will be of interest to a broad spectrum of scholars and students concerned with postmodern and postcolonial theory, ethnography, anthropology, and cultural studies. Contributors. Norma Alarcón, Edward M. Bruner, Nahum D. Chandler, Ruth Frankenberg, Joan Gross, Dorinne Kondo, Kristin Koptiuch, Smadar Lavie, Lata Mani, David McMurray, Kirin Narayan, Greg Sarris, Ted Swedenburg

Among the social sciences, anthropology relies most fundamentally on "fieldwork"—the long-term immersion in another way of life as the basis for knowledge. In an era when anthropologists are studying topics that resist geographical localization, this book initiates a long-overdue discussion of the political and epistemological implications of the disciplinary commitment to fieldwork. These innovative, stimulating essays—carefully chosen to form a coherent whole—interrogate the notion of "the field," showing how the concept is historically constructed and exploring the consequences of its dominance. The essays discuss anthropological work done in places (in refugee camps, on television) or among populations (gays and lesbians, homeless people in the United States) that challenge the traditional boundaries of "the field." The contributors suggest alternative methodologies appropriate for contemporary problems and ultimately propose a reformation of the discipline of anthropology.

Reappraises the concept of 'community', in the light of globalisation, religious fundamentalism and identity politics

Dealing with the dynamics of identification and conflict, this book uses theoretical orientations ranging from political ecology to rational choice theory, interpretive approaches, Marxism and multiscalar analysis. Case studies set in Africa, Europe and Central Asia are grouped in three sections devoted to pastoralism, identity and migration. What connects all of these anthropological explorations is a close focus on processes of identification and conflict at the level of particular actors in relation to the behaviour of large aggregates of people and to systemic conditions.

This book began as a year-long ethnography of a school in Taiwan in 1991 then evolved more into a historical sociology of national formation and its cultural mindset. Cultural nationalism is a widely debated but poorly understood process. Contrary to prevailing perceptions, the Cold War may have given way to a more progressive open society, but the politicization of ethnicity hardened a more deeply entrenched cultural frame of mind. Instead of liberating an indigenous reality, Taiwanese consciousness has ironically polarized the political dead ends of reunification and independence. In the final analysis, the ethnography can serve as a paradigmatic case study for critical cultural studies. There are clear ramifications also for a comparative study of the cultural politics of other Chinese speaking or Asian societies and their histories. Allen Chun is Chair Professor in the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Program, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. His interests involve cultural theory, nation-state formation, globalization and identity. His research focuses on Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. His recent books include Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (2017) and On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification (2019).