Lorenz has an interesting blog post on his interview with the anthropologist Thomas H. Eriksen, who among other things is the research director of the interdisciplinary research programme Culcom – Cultural Complexity in the New Norway. The following quote prompted me to post on the always slippery subject of national culture:
- What we are trying to do is shift the analytical gaze in a direction where the nation-state and the ethnic group are not viewed as the most important unit.
August 31, 2008 at 6:32 pm |
I strongly agree with the point you were making. I did my dissertation fieldwork in Tanzania in the 1980’s. Almost all the changes and challenges faced by the rural villagers I interviewed– kinship metaphors, land ownership debates, gender struggles–were “framed” by reference to the construction of the “new and modern” independent nation-state of Tanzania. Having spent, at that point, some 20 years engaged in a dialogue of the construction of a nation-state under Julius Nyerere, these were their understandings of lived experience.
September 5, 2008 at 10:47 pm |
Thanks pamthropologist. I think it’s very interesting to compare and contrast the ‘nation-building’ experiences of people across regions, given the different waves of postcolonial/post-imperial state formation in the Americas, Europe, Africa-Asia and former Soviet bloc. This was the starting point of my study of media and nation building among the Iban of Malaysia – ie to place this case within a third wave (post WWII) of sovereign state formations.
September 17, 2008 at 1:53 pm |
[...] leisure, etc) when conducting research, say among transnational migrants (Amit 2007, Eriksen 2008). [...]