Indigeneity in the context of globalization: epistemological and sociocultural aspects

Abstract

In recent decades, the “indigenization of modernity” has become one of the significant trends of the reconfiguration of landscapes of social and cultural diversity. In its contemporary meaning, the concept of indigeneity expresses the desire of indigenous peoples and various social and cultural communities, formerly marginalized within the borders of national states, to independently determine their development. From the global perspective, indigeneity is no longer associated with certain types of societies or cultural scripts of authenticity and traditional lifestyles. Indigenous actors cease to play the role of the Other in contemporary discourses and intellectual life of the West. The transition from the genealogical model of indigeneity based on the ideas of origin, kinship and cultural authenticity to the relational model allows to shift the focus from the features of the indigenous ones to the relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous actors. Indigenous peoples constitute and represent their culture taking into account public opinion, national legislation and international conventions, which leads to the fundamental transformation of the actors themselves. Their characteristics can no longer be represented only in terms of primordiality. Under globalization, the cultural patterns of indigeneity are diverse and conceptualized on the basis of new approaches to the study of the social organization of cultural diversity and models of its management. The concepts “partial relations”, “entanglement” and “intercultural relations” constitute the discourse of indigeneity, which implies recognition of multiple partial relations connecting subject and object, indigenous and non-indigenous worlds and cultural practices. Changes in the discourse of indigeneity both in social-cultural and epistemological aspects are also associated with reconfiguration of the thematic field of social anthropology.