Wykad 13

Last time we talked about

Cultural change: Innovation Diffusion Cultural loss Forced cultural change: Acculturation Responses to cultural change: Assimilation Hybridity/syncretism Revitalization movements

Today we will discuss

Modernization and globalization Ethnicity and national identity relatively new terms in anthropology until 1960s TRIBE and CULTURE 1960s- ETHNIC and NATIONAL IDENTITY Ethnic minorities Multiculturalism Ethnic revitalization

Modernization
Global processes of cultural and socioeconomic change whereby developing societies acquire some of the characteristics of the Western industrialized societies Subprocesses of modernization: 1. 2. 3. 4. technological development, agricultural development, industrialization urbanization

Does modernization lead to cultural homogenization? Modernization triggers:

Decreasing importance of religion/traditional beliefs Weakening of kinship ties and ascribed status Growth of political bureaucracies Social stratification and achievement as status indicator Differentiation: specialization of roles and functions

The Hausa of Nigeria

After WW II, Nigeria was becoming a post-colonial state (1960): the new national government attempt to unify the country insisting on party politics and fighting clan organizations The Hausa: shrewd businessmen, renowned traders, Neither pastorialists nor farmers; Traded cattle or kola nuts monopoly on credit and trust in business transaction

Retribalization to gain political power

Ethnic unity as a means of maintaining their position as exclusive traders: they started a religious brotherhood Tijaniyyah, a religious ritual that made the Hausa stand out from the non-Hausa. They introduced religious hierarchy and leadership.

Jihad vs. McWorld (1992)

The two principles of our age tribalism and globalism clash at every point except one: they may both be threatening to democracy The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonalds, pressing nations into once commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together (Barber, 1992) Globalization: new media technologies and cheap travel are used to unify people across the globe and appeal to universal qualities such as human rights and sovereignty of indigenous people. cultural contact modernization homogenization strengthening of ethnic

identities

 integrative mechanisms of the state to prevent fragmentation and division: formal governmental structures, official state ideologies, political parties, legal codes, labor and trade unions, etc. retribalization: a solidification of ethnic identity in response to modernization and integration forces in the post-colonial nation-state.

Ethnic and national identities

Primordialism ETHNIC and NATIONAL identities are often legitimated by primordial ties: common origin, ancestry, descent race, language, history, territory or place of origin, religion Constructivism Ethnic/national identities as constructed rather than innate relational situational changeable

Ethnicity as constructed identity

Cultural distinctiveness does not in itself create ethnicity. There must be a minimum of cultural contact between their respective members. The ethnic groups cultural distinctiveness has to be affirmed socially and ideologically through RECOGNITION, among its members and outsiders ethnicity is not a property of a person or a group, it is an aspect of a relationship (reaction to globalization and marginalization)

Ethnicity
A self conscious and vocalized identity that naturalizes one or more attributes the usual ones being skin color, language, religion, and territory and attaches them to collectivities as their innate possession and mythohistorical legacy (Tambiah

Invention of tradition
Hugh Trevor-Roper on the Highland tradition of Scotland: Ossian, a Scots-Gaelic epic poet whose supposed writing was discovered and translated in the 1760s. Promoters of Ossian popularized the idea that Scottish-Highland culture was a distinct and an ancient one. the modern kilt was invented about 1727 and adopted by Highlanders about 1768.

 the tartan: family tartans probably never existed. Instead, they were regionally based. What tartan one wore was mainly a decision based on preference or fashion. The wearing of kilt and tartan became popular in the nineteenth century.