Abstract:The present volume is the result of two conferences, both focused on the interface of international heritage regimes and their implementation at the state level. One event was held at the University of Göttingen within the framework of the multi-yearцinterdisciplinaryцresearchцgroupц772,ц"TheцConstitutionцofцCulturalцProperty,"ц from June 17-19, 2011, supported with funds from the German Research Foundation (DFG), and also co-organized by the Göttingen Center for Modern Humanities. The other set of papers, foc… Show more
“…Would ethnographers start asking a slightly different set of questions if the metaphor weren't boundaries but rather ecotones—those borderlands in which two ecological zones coexist in the same place? Perhaps that substitution would lead to a greater focus on the differences that make a difference between social orders, for, as Don Brenneis (, 370) reminds readers, Sometimes such ecotones are characterized by mixed assemblages—a bit of this, a bit of that—but they are also known among academic ecologists as zones in which more than the usual number of ideal types emerge; difference is most clearly marked not in the center but along the edges.…”
Section: Conclusion: New Questions and New Focimentioning
Porous social orders A B S T R A C TMany cultural anthropologists today share a common theoretical commitment: to view the people they encounter during fieldwork as living among multiple social orders that are interconnected and contingent. When social orders are multiple, ethnographers are quickly faced with the question of how people construct the boundaries between these social orders to be both durable (enough) to keep social orders distinct and porous (enough) to allow people, objects, forms, and ideas to circulate across them in appropriate ways. What counts as appropriate is, not surprisingly, often hotly contested. Despite contemporary ethnographers' varied intellectual trajectories, a crosscutting set of theoretical assumptions unites their work and shapes how they approach familiar anthropological foci, such as
“…Would ethnographers start asking a slightly different set of questions if the metaphor weren't boundaries but rather ecotones—those borderlands in which two ecological zones coexist in the same place? Perhaps that substitution would lead to a greater focus on the differences that make a difference between social orders, for, as Don Brenneis (, 370) reminds readers, Sometimes such ecotones are characterized by mixed assemblages—a bit of this, a bit of that—but they are also known among academic ecologists as zones in which more than the usual number of ideal types emerge; difference is most clearly marked not in the center but along the edges.…”
Section: Conclusion: New Questions and New Focimentioning
Porous social orders A B S T R A C TMany cultural anthropologists today share a common theoretical commitment: to view the people they encounter during fieldwork as living among multiple social orders that are interconnected and contingent. When social orders are multiple, ethnographers are quickly faced with the question of how people construct the boundaries between these social orders to be both durable (enough) to keep social orders distinct and porous (enough) to allow people, objects, forms, and ideas to circulate across them in appropriate ways. What counts as appropriate is, not surprisingly, often hotly contested. Despite contemporary ethnographers' varied intellectual trajectories, a crosscutting set of theoretical assumptions unites their work and shapes how they approach familiar anthropological foci, such as
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