Abstract
Immigrant cultures are routinely posed as threats to national culture. Particular understandings of immigrant and national cultures underlie cultural politics. Culturalism—conceiving cultures as reified, static, and homogeneous across bounded groups—imbues these understandings. Representations of immigrant and national culture are mutually constituted in policies, state institutions, the media, and everyday perceptions surrounding key categories such as borders, illegality, and the law. Furthermore, coupled with a popular or commonsense structural-functionalism that sees all cultural values and practices as inherently interlinked, many modes of cultural politics are contextually stimulated by anxieties about cultural loss. At critical junctures, certain representations gain powerful roles in cultural politics through synecdoche, when specific symbols stand for an integrated set of cultural attributes. Examples include Muslim head scarves in France and the “ground zero mosque” in the United States. Anthropologists can usefully mitigate culturalism and contribute to public debates by promoting more processual and distributive understandings of culture.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.