The other key marker of identity that exerts a major influence on people’s lives is that of race. Although most anthropologists would say that the idea of race is an invention – a cultural device for describing ‘the other’, which has little or no genetic foundation – the concept nevertheless retains a lot of popular currency. Citing Levi- Strauss, one of anthropology’s founding fathers, Clifford Geertz (1986) pointed out that every culture hopes to define itself by resisting those that surround it. This idea is very evident in discourses about race, which speak directly to fundamental ideas about what human beings are composed of: in a literal sense, blood and genes, but also in a wider sense, knowledge, beliefs and ideologies – all of which can be seen as containing an identity vulnerable to ‘pollution’ by otherness (see Douglas 2002[1966], Strang 2004).
Part of what anthropologists do in relation to race is to consider how ideas about it are created and upheld. For example, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban’s (2005) work examines ‘how racism happens’ in America, looking at the biological and cultural ideas, and the social and spatial arrangements that allow racist assumptions to persist in many communities. Gillian Cowlishaw’s (1998) research charts how ideas about race are expressed in relationships between Aboriginal people and the wider Australian population; and Peter Wade (2002) considers the implications of concepts of race in the United Kingdom’s increasingly multicultural society.
Popular ideas about racial identity have rarely produced positive visions of ‘the other’, and many anthropologists, whose profession necessarily includes an appreciation of diversity, have worked hard to combat racist stereotypes and their effects: for example – as we have seen in previous chapters – acting as advocates for beleaguered minority communities, openly criticizing racist policies and practices, and mediating in conflicts. As in other areas of research, an essential part of this task is cultural translation: the communication of different realities and experiences of life, creating a more fully informed ‘representation’ of identity that serves as a positive alternative to the stereotypes that sometimes appear in the media. In Australia, for example, Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus (1999) have been part of a lively intellectual movement to make visible the hidden history of Aboriginal people since colonization. In the UK, Brian Street (1975) wrote critically about the way that ‘savages’ have been portrayed in English literature over time, and Jeremy MacClancy (2002) has be at pains to show that ‘the other’ is ‘exotic no more’.
However, ideas about racial identity are not invariably negative: for example Carol Trosset’s (1993) classic ethnography of Welsh communities shows that where
the Welsh people have revived their own language and brought it back into everyday use, and, in doing so, have achieved a stronger sense of identity. On the other side of the planet, Aboriginal Australians have been astute in subverting negative media stereotypes of themselves as ‘primitive’, ‘pre-modern’ people, reconstructing them in more positive terms that valorize ‘traditional’ ecological knowledge, long-term, sustainable environmental management and ‘harmony with nature’ (Hendry 2006), and which stress the artistic creativity that their culture enables (Kleinert and Neale 2000).
Like race, nationalism is also a potentially double-edged sword. It can serve as a way of thinking about identity that encourages solidarity and a sense of community; or as a way of defining ‘the other’ in negative terms and dealing with them aggressively. Robert Foster’s (2002) work traces how, through engagement with Western material culture, disparate (and often warring) communities in Papua New Guinea have begun to develop the idea of a ‘nation’ which can engage more collectively – and perhaps more effectively – with a wider global context. Alternatively, anthropologists such as Jane Cowan (2000), working in Macedonia, and Joel Halpern and David Kideckel (2000), working in the former Yugoslavia, have focused on how ideas of nationhood have led neighbouring communities into bitter internal conflicts. This is a complex issue in post-colonial settler societies too. In New Zealand and Australia, for example, indigenous groups have long fought for an egalitarian bicultural ap- proach, but as Erich Kolig’s (2004) research has shown, contemporary pressures to encompass multiculturalism can often override these negotiations.
In addition to races and nations, there are other cultural and sub-cultural groups that share a common identity. As noted in Chapter 4., large social movements such as environmentalism also form distinct communities, linked by a shared ideology. Such movements can be based on class: for example, Sharryn Kasmir (2005) con- ducted research in a large automobile factory in Tennessee, examining how class identities were mobilized to resist a labor-management partnership and assert worker identification. Religions have often formed the basis of large social movements, and many ethnographers have turned their attention to the study of religious groups, thus Joel Robbins’ (2007) work considers the anthropology of Christianity, and Simon Coleman’s (2007) research on religious language and ritual has led him to consider new forms of worship via technologies such as the Internet. Tanya Luhrmann works with neo-Pagan communities in London, and notes the long history of ‘alternative’ social and religious movements:
I took myself off to London to conduct fieldwork among a subculture of people – several thousand at least – who thought of themselves as, or as inspired by, the witches, wizards, druids, kabbalists and shamans of mostly European lore.
They met in different kinds of group: ‘covens’, ‘lodges’, ‘brotherhoods’ – which all ultimately descended from a nineteenth century group – the Golden Dawn – created by three dissident Freemasons in the heyday of spiritualism and psychical research. (Luhrmann 2002: 121)
There are other ‘virtual’ communities enabled by Internet connections too. For example, Steven Klienknecht conducts research on the transnational subculture of computer ‘hackers’ whose common interest lies in breaching the boundaries of institutions and their systems. Given the potential mayhem that such hacking can create, understanding the motivations of this group is important.