Paper short abstract:

Anthropology has rightly distanced itself from exoticism. As self-definition the discipline often sets itself the task of rooting out exoticism and de-exoticizing the potential of ruling frames of thought and conventional categories of understanding. The paper addresses this perspective but concentrates on the aporia of exoticism, the difficult of escape from it and its embedding in sovereign theory even that which is promoted in social philosophy explicitly to refashion anthropology anew and away from its origins in the Nineteenth Century.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropology is undergoing a major reconfiguration of thought. The claim often repeated is that anthropology is concerned with difference and diversity. Coupled with this insistence is a radical turning away from old concepts such as those of culture and society. Major reasons are that their boundaries were too hard and fast and that they over-stressed the homogeneity of value. Associated with this was a turning away from a conception of populations that were somehow outside or external to commanding political and economic forces. All this is true. But a critical argument that will be developed is that the conceptual and theoretical replacements, especially in the context of scientific and technological revolution and major political shift, no less engage or produce an exoticism that continue dimensions of that which is explicitly rejected. This is apparent in various anthropological attempts to reimagine the nature of human dynamics, e.g. in the idea of the post-human, that may be engaged in the reinvention of what anthropologists might aim to avoid. Of further concern in the paper will be the political position of anthropology and the processes within it that my exacerbate a growing irrelevance than relevance.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on my study of Tswapong girls’ puberty rituals, my paper argues that the critical nostalgic tradition in anthropology does not arise merely from a quest for the exotic or a desire to capture a vanished cultural “essence,” as some have argued (e.g., Clifford 1986: 113, 124; Marcus and Fischer 1986: 24, 167).

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on my study of Tswapong girls' puberty rituals, my paper argues that the critical nostalgic tradition in anthropology does not arise merely from a quest for the exotic or a desire to capture a vanished cultural "essence," as some have argued (e.g., Clifford 1986: 113, 124; Marcus and Fischer 1986: 24, 167). To the extent that recognizing one's worth means recognizing one's distinctiveness, uniqueness, self-mastery, ethical subjectivity, and autonomy, rituals such as the mothei puberty ritual may be said to dignify women as individuals, despite their poverty and marginality, and to establish their place in a society of women. Among Tswapong, the mothei ritual not only signifies the achievement of seriti, dignity, but it also empowers women and is characterized by mutual help and sociability. It is a ritual that deploys physical ordeals and dramatises respect through the medium of humor, fun, and transgressive enactments of sexuality, drawing on a local lore of songs, dances, stylized burlesque, and parody as well as on substantive cosmetic bodily treatment, to fashion a woman and endow her with fertility, strength, and moral authority. Nevertheless, for young teenage girls attending local high schools who aspire to be 'modern', the mothei is fast being discarded in favor of sesha, "modern times," by many of the girls who regard themselves as "modern" subjects. Whereas, in the past, a family's status in the village was enhanced by the size of its mothei feast, the celebration is now an expense few can easily afford. This raises dilemmas for the anthropologist studying a local culture.

Paper short abstract:

The exotic is fundamental to the human imagination and its explorations of the possibilities of being human. The need for margins, transgressions and journeys is part of a need to explore, recombine and transform the categories that form social orders. Cargo cults do this through exploring the possibilities of whiteness.

Paper long abstract:

Alterity, anti-structure, liminality and communitas, rituals of inversion and rebellion, comedy, clowning and carnivals have for a long time been part of the lexicon of anthropological analyses of the social and its links to creative practices. Taking off from Gluckman, Turner and Mary Douglas, Kapferer has recently given new theoretical significance to this work and its explorations of social and cultural practices for decomposing and recomposing order. Reinterpreting this work using Deleuze's philosophy of virtual forms, Kapferer questions current methodological precautions that warn and ward off the exotic. For Kapferer, the exotic is central to the human imagination and to the production of social order. All social orders posit margins and transgressions; they have a creative constitutive dialogue with what they posit as lying outside of them, recreating this outside in the process of recreating themselves. In Melanesia, whiteness and modernity have become objects of the imagination and vehicles for organising social practices that have an utopian libratory potential whilst also being part of the development of new forms of domination and social control. Here the exotic is both fundamental to human freedom but also part of the articulation of new structures and technologies of power. At an ethnographic level, this paper will use cargo cults in PNG to take issue with recent critiques of the anthropological focus on cargo cults as part of a Gothic voyeuristic concern with the exotic that takes away from a focus on Christianity and the centrality of its localisation in PNG.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores dilemmas of structure and agency in two interrelated processes: the exoticisation of the Emberá by Others and their self-exoticisation in the context of indigenous tourism and their attempts to attract international support.

Paper long abstract:

The Emberá, an indigenous Amerindian group, have been stereotyped by Others as representing the quintessential 'native'. Exoticisation by Western admirers, takes the form of idealisation, romantic-isation and imperialist nostalgia. In the discourse of non-indigenous neighbours in Panama, the exoticisation of the Emberá often takes the form of negative stereotyping and patronising commentary. In this respect, the discourses of more powerful outsiders have framed Emberá narratives of identity and have inspired a desire for modernisation.

In the last decade, however, the development of indigenous tourism has promoted the visibility of the Emberá culture in exotic terms, and has provided the Emberá with an impetus to revitalize previously declining indigenous practices. As the Emberá become aware of the political and economic support of international audiences that see indigeneity favourably, they consciously attempt to rearticulate their identity and history in terms that resonate with or selectively depart from previous received types of exoticisation. The result of the tension between exoticisation (imposed by Others in a top-down manner) and self-exoticisation (represented by local practices and projected from the bottom up) leads to fascinating transformations in the Emberá cultural representation that can help us appreciate the discriminatory, but also culture-generating capacity of exoticisation as a process.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the notion of « ritualization of identity" by looking at how practices once conceived as« Brazilian Popular Culture », embodiying the "Soul of the Brazilian People" are being rechristened in the language of cultural difference to mark off distinct collective identities.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the notion of « ritualization of identity" to account for processes of exoticization and self-exoticization.

"Brazilian popular culture", has been during the 20th century an important vector in the ritualization of national identity, in museums, in national campaigns for folklore or in the promotion of immaterial heritage. The "Soul of the Brazilian People", was epitomized by spectacular cultural practices such as carnival and samba music in Rio de Janeiro, or artefacts like the Caruaru terracota figurines made in the Northeastern State of Pernambuco. Such practices, constructed as symbols of collective identities at various levels (local, regional, national), have been instrumental in processes of ritualization of identity, both in forms of identification first defined from the outside, and in their reappropriation by those involved. On the wake of the 1988 Constitution, « popular culture » have, by contrast, been identified as expressions of collective identities in the language of cultural difference,, associated with claims of new collective rights granted in virtue of difference.

In Brazil, the ritualization of distinctive collective identities often leads to stress the more 'exotic' elements, that reinforce the distinctive character of a 'group' both for its members and for outsiders. Processes of ritualization of identity are associated to claims: of a sense of pride based on belonging or of collective identity opening up to entitlements.

Anthropology has been involved in this process: in codifying specific cultural practices, in offering resources for identification, and sometimes in contributing to practices of official recognition of new identities.

Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork research among Capoeira teachers and apprentices in the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, the paper explores how a changing social and cultural reality challenges anthropological knowledge practices

Paper long abstract:

Capoeira, a social and cultural practice with a long and controversial history, has been rendered intelligible as 'dance', 'fight', 'sport', 'martial art' and 'philosophy'. Today, it is all over the world appealing to a search for 'authentic' experiences, to certain exotic and sensual imageries and to a need of belonging to and being identified as member of a community.

The intense mobility of Capoeira teachers from the state of Bahia to other countries as well as that of foreign apprentices to the city of Salvador is changing the way culture, community, ethnic identity and selfhood are experienced, perceived and discussed among Bahian practitioners.

At the same time, their understandings have always been influenced by the way anthropologists and other intellectuals -especially Brazilians- approached 'authenticity', 'afrobrazilian culture' and culture in general.

This rapprochement between practitioners and intellectuals becomes even more interesting as discussions on globalization entail a sense of loss and actively shape 'native' understandings and theories on social and cultural transformation and on the very concept of culture. What is more important, however, is to trace how do these 'native' understandings come to challenge and even question the way we do ethnography and reflect upon it.

In this aim, I discuss how Bahian practitioners that belong to different generations make use of a set of concepts such as 'fantasy', 'desire', 'happiness', 'creativity', 'play' and 'demystification' as they assert control over their practices and attempt to make sense of the contradictions and dilemmas they are facing in a changing world

Paper short abstract:

In the proposed paper I analyze how the need to “catch up with the West” is negotiated in debates on the appropriate form that anthropology as an imported phenomenon should assume in contemporary Poland and how in this process the (self-)exotization is employed as a strategy of identity formation.

Paper long abstract:

Considering that the need to "catch up with the West" still provides a vital theme in contemporary Poland, the debates on the appropriate form that anthropology as an imported phenomenon should assume could not escape its influence. In fact, the whole discussion is to a certain extent structured by Wallerstein-like ideas that the high quality knowledge flows from global, western (mostly Anglo-American) centers to local, non-western (half-)peripheries. However, to negotiate their own positioning, Polish anthropologists evoke that distinction in rather complex, uneven and contingent ways. In the proposed paper I examine how in this process the (self-)exotization is employed as a strategy of (resistant) identity formation. Depending on specific contexts, the label "exotic" is applied in a highly diverse and subversive manner. Considering discourses on "external" relations between the western center and the non-western (half-)periphery, it is the center - (half)periphery distinction which remains basically stable, while the western - non-western division that indicates the difference between the normalized and the exotic is being constantly shifted due to particular aims. With regard to discourses on "internal" relations between Polish anthropologists themselves, whereas western and non-western appear obvious (though differently valued) concepts, the normalized center and the exoticized (half-)periphery are variously approached by various social actors to meet their various ends. The heterogeneity of the resultant discursive space within which flexible identities are being forged, reveals performative, fragmented and unstable character of all those categories, which once seemed to form predictable and transparent world.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the picture-storytelling tradition found in West Bengal, through the process of exoticization and self-exoticisation, this paper explores the role of social structure and creative agency, to elaborate on the dynamics of identity of the art-form itself and the artists associated with it.

Paper long abstract:

This paper maps the historical and cultural trajectory of the performance tradition of storytelling through scrolls known as 'Pata-Chitra', as practiced in parts of West Bengal, from the colonial period to the present day. This unique practice of scroll painting and narration performed by a specific community of people known as the 'Patua', primarily dealt with the representation of sacred themes in the past. But with the prominence of the forces of cultural globalization, they have also taken to portraying secular themes.

From the time when this art-form had functional value in the society, to the modern day where its attribution to being 'folk' in the global marketplace has undermined their functional utility and social significance; this practice has witnessed important transitions affecting its form, content and cultural identity. As for the local community of artists associated with this tradition, they have always occupied a complex intermediary position between different religions, periodically oscillating from one to the other. This, along with changes in their art-form, has also led to transformations in terms of their religious and social identity.

By referring to the processes of 'exoticisation' and 'self-exoticisation', this paper thus attempts to understand how cultural and social identity is influenced by the interplay of social structure and human action. Through the discussion of changes in the art-form and the artist community, this paper therefore draws attention to the forces of material and social structures, and creativity, in the construction of social and cultural identity.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses cosmology and self-representation among Sinhalese in colonial and post-colonial Sri Lanka, through the transformation and reinterpretation of the practice of Buddhism, demonology and sorcery.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the changes in the local practice of Buddhism and demonology in Sri Lanka as a result of British colonialism, as well as its subsequent transformation and reinterpretation by Colonel S. Olcott and the Theosophist society (and their rejection of demonology and sorcery) during the Buddhist revival period in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I look at the ways in which Buddhism and demonology have been and are represented and interpreted by various actors and social classes in Sri Lanka. My analyses also draws on narratives collected from ongoing fieldwork in the southern district of Matara; an area notorious for the widespread practice of sorcery and demonology. I argue that the practice of sorcery and demonology in Matara district in particular, is not simply an extension of bygone rituals and tradition, but rather are practices that have evolved to incorporate contemporary objects, symbols and scenarios. The Buddhist revival brought about a reinterpretation and a new way of conceptualising ideas of nationalism, the state and social identity. Urban Sri Lankans refer to the practice of sorcery and demonology in the south (particularly Matara), as a form of backward traditionalism that appeals only to the lower class. Rather than being disconnected from the urban centres of modernity, the practice of sorcery and demonology are integral components in the definition of Sinhalese cosmology. Thus, by analysing 'self-exotisation', I am probing the way Sinhalese represent themselves and are in turn represented.