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Anthropology begins in the encounter with the ‘exotic’: what stands outside of—and challenges—conventional or established understandings. This volume confronts the distortions of orientalism, ethnocentrism, and romantic nostalgia to expose exoticism, defined as the construction of false and unsubstantiated difference. Its aim is to re-found the importance of the exotic in the development of anthropological knowledge and to overcome methodological dualisms and dualistic approaches.
Chapters look at the risk of exoticism in the perspectivist approach, the significant exotic corrective of Lévi-Strauss vis-à-vis an imperializing Eurocentrism, our nostalgic relationship with the ethnographic record, and the attempts of local communities to readapt previous exoticized referents, renegotiate their identity, and ‘counter-exoticize.’ This volume demonstrates a range of approaches that will be valuable for researchers and students seeking to effectively establish comparative methodological frameworks that transcend issues of relativism and universalism.
“This book demonstrates the urgent need for a scholarly discourse on methodological concerns with intellectual representations of minorities and subaltern groups. It echoes postcolonial critiques of representation, challenges the ‘transparency by denegations’ of intellectuals and undoes the ‘epistemic violence’… By unraveling these realities, the book contributes a meaningful analysis of deep-seated social values and heterogeneous norms for advancing the discipline of anthropology.” • Anthro Book Forum
Introduction: Against Exoticism
Bruce Kapferer and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos
Chapter 1
. On Ethnographic Nostalgia: Exoticizing and De-exoticizing the Emberá, for Example
Dimitrios Theodossopoulos
Chapter 2. Between Triste Tropique and Cultural Creativity: Modern Times and the Vanishing Primitive
Pnina Werbner
Chapter 3. The Exotic Albatross: Exotic Indians, Exotic Theory
Stephen Nugent
Chapter 4. Living the Li(f)e: Negotiating Paradise in Southern Sri Lanka
Maurice Said
Chapter 5. Bahia of All Saints, Enchantments and Dreams: Female Tourists, Capoeira Practitioners, and The Exotic
Theodora Lefkaditou
Chapter 6. From Primitive to Culturally Distinct: Patachitra Art and Self-Exoticization in West Bengal
Urmi Bhattacharyya
Afterword
Bruce Kapferer and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos
Index