Cultural Objectification Research Articles

The Irony of Stereotypes: Toward an Anthropology of Ethnicity

"Greek" is a ubiquitous stereotype in the discourse of Greek Americans. They know "Greek" reflects on themselves, though they are sometimes puzzled by the "Greek" component of their identities. Constructing these identities is problematic for them principally because there is no single "Greek" identity. "Greek" is refracted by various images and tropes, or figures of speech, each operating in different structural settings. My argument here is that this simple observation about tropes in American talk about ethnicity opens up a new way to think about ethnicity in the United States. My aim is to pose the problem of ethnicity at home in radically cultural terms. My examination of the operations of one trope-irony-on ethnic stereotypes in Greek American talk leads me to suggest that an anthropology of ethnicity must take note of irony and, more, may use it to make a new beginning in the analysis of systems of meaning. Ethnicity belongs to that assortment of cultural operators (Boon 1973) with which anthropology has made distinctive contributions among the social sciences and humanities to understanding social life: the rendering of complex cultural processes as cultural (rather than psychological or economic). This anthropological collection houses les pensees sauvage of tricksters (Beidelman 1980), totemism (L6vi-Strauss 1963, 1966), animal categories and verbal abuse (Leach 1964), food (Douglas 1975; Feeley-Harik 1981), rites of affliction (Turner 1968), and more. However, since they are not exotic, each is a worker that engages the fundamental and fundamentally social tasks of fitting the categorical around the situational. All are transformers in cultures-hence they are moral, as emphasized by social anthropologists-and rendering their powers makes the theoretical enterprise of anthropology worthwhile. But the lessons of the cultural operations of ethnicity abroad have never been brought home. Drummond (1980), for example, observed that a "creole" ethnic intersystem is not a static structure, but variant possibilities connected by transformations in a continuum. The inconsistencies and contradictions in everyday use of ethnic and racial categories in Guyana are products of shifting within a continuum. He writes, "Internal variation and change are methodologically and

Žmogus, kultūra, istorija

Straipsnyje bandoma istoriškai rekonstruoti ispanų filosofo J. Ortegos y Gasseto kultūros krizės koncepciją ir pateikti alternatyvų šios problemos sprendimo būdą. Teigiama, kad XIX a. pabaigoje – XX a. pradžioje Vakarų Europa gyveno kultūros krizės nuojautomis. J. Ortega y Gassetas teigė, kad ši krizė yra neišvengiama proto galimybių pervertinimo pasekmė. Dar antikos epochoje protas buvo paverstas žmogaus gyvenimo aukščiausiu principu. Tai davė pradžią kultūros automatizacijai, o vėliau – jos objektyvacijai. Praradusi ryšį su gyvenimo spontaniškumu kultūra sustabarėjo ir tapo kliuviniu savo pačios raidai. Vienintelis kultūros krizės sprendimo būdas glūdi tame, kad protas turi būti pajungtas gyvenimui ir taip pagyvinta kultūra: viena proto apraiškų (utopinis protas) turi būti pakeista kita (vitaliniu protu). Istorijoje viešpatauja psichologinis būtinumas. Skiriamos trys kultūros vystymosi stadijos: tradicinė, racionali ir mistinė. Racionaliojoje stadijoje vykstančios revoliucijos tėra utopinio proto avantiūros. J. Ortega y Gassetas perspektyvos teorija grindžia absoliučios tiesos galimybę ir tuo formaliai gelbsti vertybinį tiesos pobūdį.

On Sociocultural Discontinuity: Nationalism and Cultural Objectification in Quebec [and Comments and Reply

M. Estellie Smith has recently attacked the concepts "tradition" and "change" as reifications which mislead us in our study of sociocultural process. She favors "sociocultural continuity" as an analytic construct that focuses attention on the interconnected processes of continuous change and persistent collective identity that characterize all human sociocultures. This approach suffers, however, from reification analogous to that it rejects, for it posits the existence of sociocultures as bounded natural entities. It is here argued that cultural process, because it is semiotic, necessarily contains discontinuity as well as continuity. Cultural activity refers to and takes account of itself; this entails continuity (which Smith discusses as the persistence of collective identity) but also discontinuity, for the act of reference must be separate from the object of reference even if that object is a prior action or state of the persons engaged in talking about it. This argument is illustrated with an analysis of nationalist ideology in Quebec. In their search for an authentic national culture, Quebecois nationalists create the traditions that they claim merely to preserve. Seeking continuity, they invent culture anew, and thus the new culture is necessarily discontinuous with the prior culture it is meant to reproduce.

Cultural objectification of the case history.

Cultural objectification of the case history.