construction – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

The Changing Self: Fear of Death?

This item was provoked by a student essay in Cyberspace Ethnography, and is meant as an invitation for readers to post their ideas rather than serving as some sort of definitive statement on the issue. Speaking of how the self is presented on Facebook, one informant told the researcher in the course: “The person I […]

Indigenism and Essentialism, 2

In a previous post on “Anti-Anti-Essentialism,” I began by outlining some of what I think are the problems with anti-essentialism in anthropology, one of the now dominant conceptual pillars of the discipline. I wish to add a few more personal notes to that here. Again, this is by no means “finished” work, but more like […]

Anti-anti-essentialism. 1

I tell people that I am an “anti-anti-essentialist.” I am still working on what that is supposed to mean, so let me do this in bits and pieces, and this is the first entry for this topic. I am not at all convinced that essentialism–the notion, in anthropology, that a culture or ethnicity consists of […]