17. The Creolization of Identity and Personhood
Convenors:
Ernst Halbmayer,
University of Vienna
Peter Schweitzer,
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Discussant:
Elke Mader,
University of Vienna
Recent
discussions in social anthropology have focused on syncretism, hybridity and
creolization in the remaking of identity and alterity under conditions of
global transformations. Notions of and relations between place, culture and
community were questioned and reformulated. But what is the impact of
increasing translocal connections for the constitution of persons and bodies?
How are new selves formed in interaction with different others?
This workshop
attempts a comparative analysis of such processes by focussing on different
socio-cultural conceptions of personhood and corporality. Beyond the modern
ideal of a single individual identity, persons and bodies usually are
conceptualized as a conglomerate of different (e.g. social, spiritual and
physical) components, that relate identity not only to a specific social group
but to multiple entities and aGhents in time and space. Can
“creolization” contribute to the understanding of personhood? Are
processes of creolization of identity just the effects of globalising
conditions or are underlying pre-existing notions of multiple aspects of
personhood shaping newly emerging forms of identity? Does globalization lead to
the final victory of western notions of the self or will it provide unexpected
venues for multiple and non-dualistic models of identity?
The
Fragmented Self: On the Experience of Ethnography and the Politics of Culturism
Thomas
Reuter, University
of Melbourne
Amazonian counter-voices and translations for modern-day
use: monsters in the heart and stomach
Joanna Overing,
University of St. Andrews
Creolization
and Diversification: Othering and nostrification in the transformation of
personhood and identities among the Yukpa, Venezuela
Ernst
Halbmayer, University of Vienna
Stefan R. F.
Khittel, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Coming
of Age in Happy Valley-Goose Bay
Evie
Plaice, University of New Brunswick