Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism: Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives (Asa Monographs, 45)

397 Pages·2008·1.82 MB·English

by  Pnina Werbner

Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism
ASA Monographs
ISSN 0066-9679
1. The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, ed M. Banton
2. Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, ed M. Banton
3. Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed M. Banton
4. The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, ed M. Banton
5. The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, ed E.R. Leach
6. Themes in Economic Anthropology, ed R. Firth
7. History and Social Anthropology, ed I.M. Lewis
8. Socialization: The Approach from Social Anthropology, ed P. Mayer
9. Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, ed M. Douglas
10. Social Anthropology and Language, ed E. Ardener
11. Rethinking Kinship and Marriage, ed R. Needham
12. Urban Ethnicity, ed A. Cohen
13. Social Anthropology and Medicine, ed J.B. Loudon
14. Social Anthropology and Law, ed I. Hamnett
15. The Anthropology of the Body, ed J. Blacking
16. Regional Cults, ed R.P. Werbner
17. Sex and Age as Principles of Social Differentiation, ed J. La Fontaine
18. Social and Ecological Systems, ed P. C. Burnham and R.F. Ellen
19. Social Anthropology of Work, ed S. Wallman
20. The Structure of Folk Models, ed L. Holy and L. Stuchlik
21. Religious Organization and Religious Experience, ed J. Davis
22. Semantic Anthropology, ed D. Parkin
23. Social Anthropology and Development Policy, ed R. Grillo and A. Rew
24. Reason and Morality, ed J. Overing
25. Anthropology at Home, ed A. Jackson
26. Migrants, Workers, and the Social Order, ed J.S. Eades
27. History and Ethnicity, ed E. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman
28. Anthropology and the Riddle of the Sphinx: Paradox and Change in the Life Course,
ed P. Spencer
29. Anthropology and Autobiography, ed J. Okely and H. Callaway
30. Contemporary Futures: Perspectives from Social Anthropology, ed S. Wallman
31. Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice, ed C.M. Hann
32. Environmentalism: The View from Anthropology, ed K. Milton
33. Questions of Consciousness, ed A.P. Cohen and N. Rapport
34. After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology,
ed A. James, A. Dawson and J. Hockey
35. Ritual, Performance, Media, ed F. Hughes-Freeland
36. The Anthropology of Power, ed A. Cheater
37. An Anthropology of Indirect Communication, ed J. Hendry and C.W. Watson
38. Elite Cultures, ed C. Shore and S. Nugent
39. Participating in Development, ed P. Sillitoe, A. Bicker and J. Pottier
40. Human Rights in Global Perspective, ed R.A. Wilson and J.P. Mitchell
41. The Qualities of Time, ed W. James and D. Mills
42. Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology, ed S. Coleman and
P. Collins
43. Anthropology and Science: Epistemologies in Practice, ed J. Edwards, P. Harvey and
P. Wade
44. Creativity and Cultural Improvisation, ed E. Hallam and T. Ingold
Anthropology and the New
Cosmopolitanism
Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives
Edited by
Pnina Werbner
Oxford • New York
Disclaimer:
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packaged with the original printed version of the book.
First published in 2008 by
Berg
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© Pnina Werbner 2008
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Anthropology and the new cosmopolitanism : rooted, feminist and vernacular
perspectives / edited by Pnina Werbner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84788-197-7 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 1-84788-197-1 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84788-198-4 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-84788-198-X (pbk.)
1. Anthropology. 2. Cosmopolitanism. 3. Globalization—Social aspects.
I. Werbner, Pnina.
GN25.A64 2008
301—dc22
2008005171
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 184788 197 7 (Cloth)
ISBN 978 184788 198 4 (Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn
www.bergpublishers.com
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Preface xiii
1 Introduction: Towards a New Cosmopolitan Anthropology
Pnina Werbner 1
Section I Anthropology as a Cosmopolitan Discipline
2 The Founding Moment: Sixty Years Ago
Elizabeth Colson 33
3 The Cosmopolitan Encounter: Social Anthropology and the
Kindness of Strangers
Pnina Werbner 47
4 Towards a Rooted Anthropology: Malinowski, Gellner and
Herderian Cosmopolitanism
Chris Hann 69
Section II Feminist and Non-Violent Cosmopolitan Movements
5 Gender, Rights and Cosmopolitanisms
Maila Stivens 87
6 Islamic Cosmopolitics, Human Rights and Anti-Violence Strategies
in Indonesia
Kathryn Robinson 111
7 ‘A new consciousness must come’: Affectivity and Movement in
Tamil Dalit Women’s Activist Engagement with Cosmopolitan
Modernity
Kalpana Ram 135
– v –
Contents
Section III Rooted Cosmopolitanism, Public Cosmopolitans
8 A Native Palestinian Anthropologist in Palestinian-Israeli
Cosmopolitanism
Aref Abu-Rabia 159
9 Responding to Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Patriots, Ethnics and the
Public Good in Botswana
Richard Werbner 173
10 Paradoxes of the Cosmopolitan in Melanesia
Eric Hirsch 197
11 Cosmopolitics, Neoliberalism, and the State: The Indigenous
Rights Movement in Africa
Dorothy L. Hodgson 215
Section IV Vernacular Cosmopolitans, Cosmopolitan National Spaces
12 Cosmopolitan Nations, National Cosmopolitans
Richard Fardon 233
13 Other Cosmopolitans in the Making of the Modern Malay World
Joel S. Kahn 261
14 On Cosmopolitan and (Vernacular) Democratic Creativity: Or,
There Never Was a West
David Graeber 281
Section V Demotic and Working-Class Cosmopolitanisms
15 Xenophobia and Xenophilia in South Africa: African Migrants
in Cape Town
Owen B. Sichone 309
16 Cosmopolitan Values in a Central Indian Steel Town
Jonathan Parry 325
17 Cosmopolitanism, Globalisation and Diaspora
Stuart Hall in Conversation with Pnina Werbner 345
Index 361
– vi–
Contributors
Aref Abu-Rabia is Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and
teaches anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
He is author of four books, including The Negev Bedouin and Livestock Rearing:
Social, Economic and Political Aspects (Berg 1994), and A Bedouin Century:
Education and Development Among the Negev Tribes in the Twentieth Century
(Berghahn 2002). He has published numerous scholarly articles across a range
of subjects, including traditional medicine, ethno-botany, family customs, holy
saints, education, violence, and abuse of children in the Middle East.
Elizabeth Colson is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology,
University of California, Berkeley. She is author of The Makah (Manchester
1953), Three Pomo Women (California 1966), Marriage and the Family among
the Plateau Tonga (Manchester 1958) Social Organization of the Gwembe Tonga
(Manchester 1962), Social Consequences of Resettlement (Manchester 1973),
Tradition and Contract (Aldine 1975), and most recently, Tonga Religious Life
in the 20th Century (Bookworld Publishers 2006). She continues to do fieldwork
among the Tonga of Zambia.
Richard Fardon is Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology and
Sociology at SOAS, University of London, where he teaches anthropological
theory and the ethnography of West Africa. His most recent book, Lela in Bali:
History Through Ceremony in Cameroon (Berghahn 2006), traces 200 years
of change in a ‘national’ event across precolonial, colonial and postcolonial
regimes. Other authored books include Mary Douglas: an Intellectual Biography
(Routledge 1999) and a long-term project comparing the masquerades of the
Nigerian Middle Belt, Fusions: Masquerades and Thought-Style East of the Niger-
Benue (London, Saffron 2007). His edited books include From Prague Poet to
Oxford Anthropologist: Franz Baermann Steiner Celebrated (with J. Alder and
C. Tully, Munich 2003), African Broadcast Cultures: Radio in Transition (with
Graham Furness, Praeger 2000), and Modernity on a Shoestring: Dimensions
of Globalization, Consumption and Development in Africa and Beyond (Leiden
1999). He was editor of Africa until 2007.
– vii –
List of Contributors
David Graeber is Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths College, and the author
of Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value (Palgrave 2002) and Fragments
of an Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago 2004). His most recent books are Lost
People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar (Indiana 2007). Two
books – Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, and Direct
Action: An Ethnography, are both forthcoming. He co-authored with Stevphen
Shukaitis Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigation, Collective Theorization
(AK Press 2007).
Stuart Hall is currently Professor Emeritus at the Open University and Visiting
Professor, Goldsmiths College. He was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and was
educated in Jamaica and at Merton College, Oxford, where he was Rhodes Scholar.
A socialist, he joined forces in the 1950s with E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams
and others to launch two radical journals, The New Reasoner and the New Left
Review, of which he was the editor (1959–61). In 1957 he joined the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament with many other leading activists. He was Director
of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University
(1968–79) before becoming Professor of Sociology at the Open University.
Among his many books are Situating Marx (1972), Policing the Crisis (1978),
The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (1988), New
Times (1989), Resistance through Rituals (1989), Gramsci’s Political Thought
(1990), Formations of Modernity (1991), Questions of Cultural Identity (1996),
Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997), Visual Culture (1999)
and Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (2004).
Chris Hann is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology,
Halle, Germany. Prior to moving to Germany in 1999 he taught social anthro-
pology in Britain at the Universities of Kent and Cambridge. He has published
extensively in economic and political anthropology. Recent books include ‘Not
the Horse We Wanted!’ Postsocialism, Neoliberalism and Eurasia, and (with the
‘Civil Religion’ Group) The Postsocialist Religious Question; Faith and Power
in Central Asia and East-Central Europe, (both volumes published by LIT Verlag
2006).
Eric Hirsch is Reader in Social Anthropology at Brunel University, West London.
He has a long-standing interest in the ethnography and history of Melanesia and
has also conducted anthropological research in Greater London. He recently
co-edited Transactions and Creations: Property Debates and the Stimulus of
Melanesia (Berghahn 2004), and a special edition of the journal History and
Anthropology on the theme of ‘Ethnographies of Historicity’ (2005).
– viii –
List of Contributors
Dorothy L. Hodgson is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute
for Research on Women at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author
of The Church of Women: Gendered Encounters between Maasai and Missionaries
(Indiana 2005) and Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity and the Cultural
Politics of Maasai Development (Indiana 2001); editor of Gendered Modernities:
Ethnographic Perspectives (Palgrave 2001) and Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa:
Gender, Culture and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist (James Currey 2000),
and co-editor with Sheryl McCurdy of ‘Wicked’ Women and the Reconfiguration
of Gender in Africa (Heinemann 2001). Her current work explores the historical
and contemporary dynamics of pastoralist organisations, transnational advocacy
and the state in Tanzania, forms of collective action among women in Africa, and
tensions between the culture of rights and the rights of culture.
Joel S. Kahn, currently Professor of Anthropology at Melbourne’s La Trobe
University, has been carrying out anthropological research in Malaysia, Singapore
and Indonesia for three decades. His publications include Minangkabau Social
Formations: Indonesian Peasants and the World Economy (Cambridge 1980),
Constituting the Minangkabau: Peasants, Culture and Modernity in Colonial
Indonesia (Berg 1993), Culture, Multiculture, Postculture (Sage 1995) and
Modernity and Exclusion (Sage 2001). His latest book is Other Malays: Nationalism
and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World (NIAS and University of
Hawaii Press 2006). He is currently researching ‘Translocal Identities in the
Modern Malay World’, a project funded by the Australian Research Council.
Jonathan Parry is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics
and Political Science. He has done field research in various parts of north and
central India on various topics. His publications include Caste and Kinship in
Kangra (Routledge 1979), Death in Banaras (Cambridge 1994), Death and the
Regeneration of Life (co-edited with M. Bloch, Cambridge 1982), Money and the
Morality of Exchange (co-edited with M. Bloch, Cambridge 1989), The Worlds of
Indian Industrial Labour (co-edited with J. Breman and K. Kapadia, Sage 1999),
Institutions and Inequalities (co-edited with R. Guha, Oxford University Press
1999) and Questions of Anthropology (co-edited with R. Astuti and C. Stafford,
Berg 2007).
Kalpana Ram is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Macquarie University where
she is currently the Head of Department. Her main ethnography is Mukkuvar
Women: Gender, Hegemony and Capitalist Transformations in a South Indian
Fishing Community (Allen and Unwin 1991, Kali for Women Press 1992).
Her edited collections include Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Post
Colonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific (co-edited with M. Jolly, Cambridge
– ix–