James Ferguson with Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order and John and Jean Comaroff with Ethnicity, Inc. use an African-centered anthropological approach in order to conceptualize politics of “belonging” in the neoliberal global order. Both examine identity politics centered around inclusion and exclusion in light of transforming citizenships and sovereignties, and advocate for a re-assessment of taken-for-granted assumptions utilized by the discipline. Ferguson and the Comaroffs aim to examine anthropological theory from an African perspective by analyzing phenomena specific to the region, and both find that this approach reveals common trends along citizenship and identity politics across the globe. However, Global
Shadows …show more content…
However, Hale derives his notion of neoliberal multiculturalism from a Latin American context, and the Comaroffs primarily from sub-Saharan Africa. In actuality, that statement is not completely true; Ethnicity, Inc. cites ethnoenterprise within Native American ethnic groups as their introduction to their seven attributes of
Ethnicity, Inc. (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009:60-5), thus revealing the fruitful possibilities of a multi-sited, rather than regionally-specific, approach. Ferguson also borrows from Taussig’s work, whose Mimesis and Alterity was written in light of research in Panama, yet also applied his concept to an African context (2006:162). The obvious pattern here is that rather than a distinctly
African perspective, anthropologists who conduct research in and write about Africa borrow from other regions of the Global South to conceptualize the particularities of their foci.
Reliance upon not only nationalistic frameworks but also continental ones for …show more content…
In an increasingly transnational global network of inclusion and exclusion, the particularities of one geographical entity must be but one of many components of a theoretical perspective. How much would a perspective such as an African one reflect the realities of a globe-hopping, ethno-commodified, neoliberal stage? And what does this impulse of anthropologists to clutch to territorial division reveal about taken-for-granted assumptions within anthropological theory?
Without diminishing the importance of local contexts in the production of anthropological theory, one who aims to generate a broader guiding orientation for the discipline may find a Global South perspective to be more useful. Here, an encompassment of geographical boundaries is permitted to theorize inequality along historical, class-based, political and economic lines that have determined the politics of belonging across the globe. Can conditions one would associate with the Global South exist within the Global North? The answer, quite obviously, is “yes”. However, any theoretical orientation that cites Africa (or any single region in particular) as the basis for its production risks reproducing implied assumptions that
Shadows …show more content…
However, Hale derives his notion of neoliberal multiculturalism from a Latin American context, and the Comaroffs primarily from sub-Saharan Africa. In actuality, that statement is not completely true; Ethnicity, Inc. cites ethnoenterprise within Native American ethnic groups as their introduction to their seven attributes of
Ethnicity, Inc. (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009:60-5), thus revealing the fruitful possibilities of a multi-sited, rather than regionally-specific, approach. Ferguson also borrows from Taussig’s work, whose Mimesis and Alterity was written in light of research in Panama, yet also applied his concept to an African context (2006:162). The obvious pattern here is that rather than a distinctly
African perspective, anthropologists who conduct research in and write about Africa borrow from other regions of the Global South to conceptualize the particularities of their foci.
Reliance upon not only nationalistic frameworks but also continental ones for …show more content…
In an increasingly transnational global network of inclusion and exclusion, the particularities of one geographical entity must be but one of many components of a theoretical perspective. How much would a perspective such as an African one reflect the realities of a globe-hopping, ethno-commodified, neoliberal stage? And what does this impulse of anthropologists to clutch to territorial division reveal about taken-for-granted assumptions within anthropological theory?
Without diminishing the importance of local contexts in the production of anthropological theory, one who aims to generate a broader guiding orientation for the discipline may find a Global South perspective to be more useful. Here, an encompassment of geographical boundaries is permitted to theorize inequality along historical, class-based, political and economic lines that have determined the politics of belonging across the globe. Can conditions one would associate with the Global South exist within the Global North? The answer, quite obviously, is “yes”. However, any theoretical orientation that cites Africa (or any single region in particular) as the basis for its production risks reproducing implied assumptions that