What for, Vol. IX No. 18/19, 2010.
Professional paper
Culture and Identity as Politically Inevitable Concepts: A prelude to adjusting the anthropological debate on multiculturalism to political reality
Ivana Gačanović
orcid.org/0000-0002-4783-8025
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Belgrade
Abstract
Apart from an overview of general problems faced by contemporary political, legal and cultural theories regarding multiculturalism, I will place emphasis in this work on the key segments of anthropological critique and relation towards multiculturalism as a philosophical and political idea (and practise). In this sense I will start from the assumption that redefinition of the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ in anthropology has, especially since the second half of the 20th century, posed some new, politically relevant questions within the discipline itself, thus providing anthropologists a chance to participate in coordination of their theoretical concepts in current political uses, and contribute to contemporary political theory – including multicultural debates. Particular emphasis is put in this text on the ambivalence felt by the contemporary anthropological theory of (post-)culture towards misuses of cultural peculiarities and strategic identity politics.
Keywords
the concept of culture; multiculturalism; identity politics; anthropological theory
Hrčak ID:
61632
URI
Publication date:
3.11.2010.
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