1st Edition

Signifying Identities Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Identities

Edited By Anthony Cohen Copyright 2000
    192 Pages
    by Routledge

    186 Pages
    by Routledge

    This collection of extended papers examines the ways in which relations between national, ethnic, religious and gender groups are underpinned by each group's perceptions of their distinctive identities and of the nature of the boundaries which divide them. Questions of frontier and identity are theorised with reference to the Maori, Australian aborigines and Celtic groups.
    The theoretical arguments and ethnographic perspectives of this book place it at the cutting edge of contemporary anthropological scholarship on identity, with respect to the study of ethnicity, nationalism, localism, gender and indigenous peoples. It will be of value to scholars and students of social and cultural anthropology, human geography and social psychology.

    Introduction, Anthony P. Cohen; Part 1 Boundary; Chapter 1 Boundaries and connections, Fredrik Barth; Chapter 2 Maori and modernity, Anne Salmond; Chapter 3 Violence and the work of time, Veena Das; Part 2 Identity; Chapter 4 Aboriginality, authenticity and the Settler world, Robert Paine; Chapter 5 Peripheral wisdom, James W. Fernandez; Chapter 6 Peripheral vision, Anthony P. Cohen;

    Biography

    Anthony Cohen is Professor of Social Anthropology, and Provost of Law and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.