Anthropology is emerging in societies that until recently were only objects of anthropological attention. The main agents of anthropology's diffusion outside its traditional centers are non-or semi-Westerners trained in Euro-American institutions. In general, U.S. anthropologists have paid more attention than Europeans to issues concerning the situation of "native" or "indigenous" anthropologists. In the 1970s, discussions about native anthropologists focused primarily on their relative capacity to achieve a neutral or objective perspective and on their relative ease of access to "inside" information. Moreover, there have been many assertions that native anthropologists, and especially scholars "of color," infuse the discipline with politically relevant questions and perspectives, which derive from their own positionality and experience. In fact, many of the arguments sustaining this view have been central to critiques addressing the politics of anthropological knowledge that have been put forth by academics engaged in ethnic or cultural studies in the United States as well as by anthropologists. 1 However, nowadays it is reasonable to doubt that native anthropologists constitute a distinct category, on several grounds. The "insider"-"native" versus "outsider"-"foreigner" dichotomy has been relativized or deconstructed, as have many other categories (e.g., periphery versus center, private versus public) that were central to anthropological theorizing. From the perspective of the current theoretical emphasis on the multiplicity and negotiability of identity in general, the meaning of native seems far from given. Also, on a practical level, the proliferation of channels for international communication has facilitated the integration of non-Euro-Americans into the international community of anthropologists. Nevertheless, I doubt that these developments have fundamentally altered the ways in which anthropologists think and practice. Many of the ideas associated with now obsolete conceptual dichotomies are not exhausted, but are rephrased in more fashionable terms, like the "local" versus "global" contrast, which seems quite central in current anthropological discourse. The understanding Cultural Anthropology 12(4):502-526.
Consensus among Greeks claims that the rates of burglaries and thefts have been increasing during the last ten years and that this constitutes a major social problem for which immigrants, and, especially Albanians, are responsible. This article theorizes that the selection of burglaries as source of risk deploys the understanding that the flip side of the increase in property crime is increased affluence and that both are part of modernization. The selection of houses as targets of aggression enables people, especially men, to construe themselves as protectors of houses objectifying the longstanding ideals of household management and as members of a modern society in which security is a matter of individual consumer choice. The portrayal of immigrants as destitute thieves reinforces the construct of the Greek nation state as a successful albeit vulnerable household writ-large.
The nineteenth-century discourse on women's education in Greece was a part of a more general nationalist ideology aimed at promoting Greece's westernization. Arguments put forth by members of the educated elite concerning the quantity, form, and content of girls' schooling generally appealed to European examples. Curiously, many of this discourse's central ideas about the nature and callings of womanhood appear to be strikingly similar to gender-related ideas documented by ethnographers, and usually considered fundamental features of local communities or of Greek culture generally. The possible analogies and historical connections between nineteenth- and twentieth-century gender-related ideas suggest that ethnographers have overemphasized the Greeks' own sense of cultural specificity vis-à-vis "Europeans." Conversely, they have underestimated the extent to which Greeks see themselves through a "European" perspective and internalize a "European" identity.
Résumé Les anthropologues en général et les ethnographes de Grèce ont postulé que la construction de l’identité culturelle est avant tout un processus culturel. En conséquence, ils ont porté peu d’intérêt aux stratégies et pratiques mises en œuvre par les gens pour exprimer leur ressemblance entre eux-mêmes et les autres, qu’ils soient, dans la société, leurs inférieurs ou leurs supérieurs. L’auteur s’appuie, d’une part, sur des exemples tirés à la fois de ses propres terrains de recherche et de ceux d’autres ethnographes de la Grèce contemporaine ; d’autre part, sur des études historiques de la Grèce du xix e siècle. Ce corpus tend à prouver que le désir de s’élever vers une vie meilleure (opulence, réputation, position sociale et autorité) est inhérent à la « nature humaine ». Imiter les manières des « supérieurs » et se projeter vers les « inférieurs » est le fait d’un même désir qui se trouve ainsi à la fois « naturalisé » et légitimé. Désir et processus mimétique deviennent le moyen d’éclairer les inégalités sociales et les pratiques d’exclusion qu’ils génèrent et cherchent en même temps à dépasser. Le fait de réaliser que les frontières entre catégories sociales à l’intérieur desquelles les gens se placent eux-mêmes et placent les autres sont fluides et négociables, conduit à reconsidérer la notion de contexte social qui se référait plutôt à des catégories spatio-temporelles.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.