Identity And Affect: Experiences of Identity in a Globalising World (Anthropology, Culture and Society)

318 Pages·1999·3.02 MB·English

by  John R. Campbell (Editor)

IDENTITY AND AFFECT
EXPERIENCES OF IDENTITY IN
A GLOBALISING WORLD
EDITED BY
JOHN R. CAMPBELL AND ALAN REW
P
Pluto Press
LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA
First published 1999 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 22883 Quicksilver Drive,
Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
Copyright © John R. Campbell and Alan Rew 1999
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 1428 7 hbk
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Identity and affect : experiences of identity in a globalising world /
edited by John R. Campbell and Alan Rew.
p. cm. — (Anthropology, culture, and society)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0–7453–1428–7 (hbk)
1. Ethnicity. 2. Group identity. 3. Acculturation. 4. Social
change.I.Campbell,JohnR.,1951– .II.Rew,Alan,1941– .
III. Series.
GN495.6.I336 1999
305.8—dc21 98–42633
CIP
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Production Services, Chadlington, OX7 3LN
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton
Printed in the EC by TJ International, Padstow
CONTENTS
Notes on Contributors vii
Preface ix
1. The Political Economy of Identity and Affect 1
Alan Rew and John R. Campbell
Part I ‘Becoming ...’
2. Constructing Identities in Nineteenth-century Colombo 39
R.L. Stirrat
3. Responding to Subordination: Identity and Change
among South Indian Untouchable Castes 64
David Mosse
4. Feasting Friends, Eating Enemies: Amity and Enmity in
Kalauna 105
Michael W. Young
5. States of Anxiety: Cultural Identities and Development
Management in East New Britain 130
Alan Rew
Part II ‘Belonging ...’
6. Culture, Social Organisation and Asian Identity:
Difference in Urban East Africa 169
John R. Campbell
7. Historicity and Communality: Narratives about the
Origins of the Italian ‘Community’ in Britain 199
Anne-Marie Fortier
vi Identity and Affect
Part III ‘Being ...’
8. ‘An African Railwayman is a Railwayman’ ...
Or the Subject of the Subject of the Subject 227
Ralph Grillo
9. Celebrating Diverse Identities: Person, Work and Place
in South Wales 251
Leonard Mars
10. The Organisation of Development as an Illness:
About the Metastasis of Good Intentions 275
Philip Quarles van Ufford
Index 294
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
John R. Campbellis a lecturer in anthropology at the University of
Wales, Swansea. He has conducted fieldwork in Ghana, Tanzania and
Ethiopia, and has been involved in development work in Ethiopia,
Tanzania, Kenya and Botswana. His work has focused on urban and
rural development, ethnicity and identity, NGOs, and on nationalism
and development in the Horn and in East Africa.
Anne-Marie Fortieris a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre
for Research on Citizenship and Social Transformation at Concordia
University, Montreal; she will shortly be joining the Department of
Sociology at the University of Lancaster. Her areas of study include
identity, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity. Her forthcoming book
Italians Never Die, They Just Pasta Away? Indeterminacy, Continuity and
the Location of Culture, examines the formation of an Italian emigré culture
in Britain, with a special emphasis on the construction of gendered,
generational and ethnic subjects.
Ralph Grillo is Professor of Social Anthropology in the School of
African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex. Formerly the Dean
of the School, he is presently the Director of the Graduate Research
Centre for Comparative Study of Culture, Development and the
Environment. His publications include African Railwaymen (1973),
Ideologies and Institutions in Urban France (1985), Dominant Languages
(1989) and Pluralism and the Politics of Difference: Ethnicity, State and Culture
in Comparative Perspective(Berg, 1988).
Leonard Mars is a lecturer in social anthropology at the University
of Wales, Swansea. In addition to The Village and the State(1980), he
has published in Comparative Studies in Society in History, Jewish Social
Studies, Food and Foodwaysand elsewhere. He is currently engaged in
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viii Identity and Affect
ESRC-funded research on the reconstruction of ethnic and religious
identity in post-communist Hungary.
David Mosse is at the Anthropology Department of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has lived and
worked in India since 1978. His research interests in south India focus
on popular religion and vernacular Christianity, dalit movements,
environmental history and indigenous irrigation. He worked as Oxfam
Country Representative in Bangalore (1987–91) and as a long-term
social development consultant with a participatory natural resources
project in tribal western India (1990–98). He now combines active
engagement in rural development with teaching and research on the
anthropology of development.
Alan Rew is Professor of Development Policy and Planning in the
University of Wales and Director of the Centre for Development Studies
at Swansea. He is an anthropologist whose main area of writing and
teaching concerns the interface between development practice and social
institutions. He has extensive academic and planning experience in
the Pacific, and is currently investigating, and advising on, the impact
of poverty reduction initiatives in Orissa and in Kenya.
R.L. Stirratteaches in the School of African and Asian Studies at the
University of Sussex. His main research interests are concerned with
religion and the anthropology of development, primarily in Sri Lanka.
Philip Quarles van Uffordteaches anthropology and development
sociology at the Free University of Amsterdam. He has a special
interest in the analysis of development policy and has published many
papers on NGOs, rural development, chaos theory, the ideology of
the market, development morality and religion and development.
His main areas of study are in Southeast Asia.
Michael W. Young teaches anthropology in the Research School
of Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University. He
has been carrying out fieldwork in Kalauna in the Massim area of eastern
Papua New Guinea since the late 1960s about which he has written
extensively. Recently, and at the request of the family, he has been
working on an official biography of Bronislaw Malinowski.
PREFACE
The chapters in this book focus on the experience of identity as a key
problem in social organisation. Most commentators on global and local
social change can readily acknowledge that ‘identity’ will be fundamental
to their social analysis; yet most also find it a perplexing and contradictory
concept when trying to capture the force and experience of self-
consciousness and collective awareness. ‘Identity’ is regularly thought
of as intimate in its meaning and referents; yet is also often macro-
political in its texture, context and effects. The pathways to and from
social identity suggest divergent causal sequences – use is made of the
affectual element in intimate bonds in order to source the meaning
of binding political ethnicity; reference is made to national political
and economic fault lines to explain enforced choices in the primary
social roles of gender, employment, caste, religion and citizen.
These perplexities led us to explore social identity further, through
the present volume and through the formulation of two central
questions: How do the intensely felt emotions aroused within individuals
by their participation in the intimate cultures of family and locality
feed into the experience of shared socialidentity at local, regional and
national levels; and how are the trials, processes and experiences of
individual life-projects and identity structured and fragmented under
radically different global conditions? Alternation between the intimate
and political economic aspects of identity has been central to the
discussions in and around the development of the chapters in this book.
These were also questions which emerged in explicit form in the
workshop held at the University of Wales Swansea in June 1996 to
consider the first drafts.
In addressing these questions in the chapters in this book, and at
theworkshop,wehavebeenmorethanusuallyawarethatthevolume
isajointone.Thecollaboratorscametothediscussionswithawide
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x Identity and Affect
range of theoretical and ethnographic problems about identity: the
use of psychoanalytic theory in the anthropology of identity; the
historical evolution of ethnic and national identities which either
divide or unite contemporary nation-states; the changing character
ofworkandemploymentasasourceofprimaryidentity;thesalience
of identity and affect in South Asia, Melanesia, East Africa and
contemporaryBritain.Theworkshopdiscussionsandthelargevolume
of precedingand subsequentjointthinking confirmedourview that
therewashereaprojectwhichwasveryunder-theorisedordeveloped.
All contributors felt the issue was a critical contemporary one for
anthropology.
The always common and continuing presence throughout the
period of collaborative writing and editorial work – because of his
seminalwritingonidentity–wasA.L.Epstein.Althoughhewasnot
presentattheworkshop,andcametoknowofthevolumeonlywhen
it was nearly complete, Bill Epstein’s work served as a guiding
inspiration. The chapters are therefore intended as a tribute and
acknowledgement of his many and profound contributions. He has
takenthedebateonsocialidentityforwardinaquiteuniquewayand
donesoinarangeofsettings–inrapidlychangingyetalsoculturally
continuous urban and rural contexts and in ways that show how
affect and identity and local, colonial and national politics are inter-
digitatedontheZambianCopperbeltandamongtheTolaiofPapua
New Guinea.
We benefited too from the active participation and generous
suggestions of a number of other collaborators and colleagues. Richard
Jenkins, a former colleague, read an article on Danish identity and their
national flag at the Swansea workshop, and made many valuable
suggestions on the individual chapters and for the introductory chapter.
Margaret Kenna was generous with her time and suggestions and led
the discussion on Michael Young’s chapter as he could not attend the
Swansea meeting in person. At an earlier stage, Karen Tranberg
Hansen of Northwestern University had helped in the initial discussions
which finally shaped the project. A seminar paper at Swansea by
Robin Cohen on similar issues came at a very opportune time; we
then benefited greatly from his insightful comments on the manuscript.
Hazel Lewis administered the key workshop with her usual skill and
efficiency and was the frictionless conduit through which John
Preface xi
Campbell and I organised editorial meetings and the flow of scripts.
The single most important ingredient in the editorial process was John
Campbell’s commitment to and insight into the central ideas, his
organisational skills and his persistence.
Alan Rew
Swansea, May 1998
For Bill Epstein