Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach

✍ Scribed by Gerd Baumann (editor), Andre Gingrich (editor)

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 236
• Series: EASA Series 3
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Issues of the construction of Self and Other, normally in the context of social exclusion of those perceived as different, have assumed a new urgency. This collection offers a fresh perspective on the ongoing debates on these questions in the social sciences and the humanities by focusing specifically on one theoretical proposition, namely, that the seemingly universal processes of identity formation and exclusion of the 'other' can be differentiated according to three modalities. All contributors directly engage with rigorous empirical testing and theoretical cross-examination of this proposition. Their results have direct implications not only for a more differentiated understanding of collective identities, but also for a better understanding of extreme collective violence and genocide.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
List of Figures
Foreword • Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich
Acknowledgments
Step I: From an Essentialised Use of ‘Othering’ to a Differentiation of Grammars
1 Conceptualising Identities: Anthropological Alternatives to Essentialising Difference and Moralizing about Othering • Andre Gingrich
2 Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach • Gerd Baumann
Step II: From a Repertoire of Grammars to Hierarchies and Power
3 Othering the Scapegoat in Nepal: The Ritual of Ghantakarna • Michael Mühlich
4 German Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Diachronic View • Anne Friederike Müller
5 Alterity as Celebration, Alterity as Threat:A Comparison of Grammars between Brazil and Denmark • Inger Sjørslev
Step III: From Power to Violence – when Grammars Implode
6 Completing or Competing ? Contexts of Hmong Selfing/Othering in Laos • Christian Postert
7 ‘Out of the Race’: The Poiesis of Genocide in Mass Media Discourses in Côte d’Ivoire • Karel Arnaut
8 Dehumanization as a Double-Edged Sword: From Boot-Camp Animals to Killing Machines • Jojada Verrips
Step IV: From Testing Grammars to Widening the Debate
9 Between Structure and Agency: From the langue of Hindutva Identity Construction to the parole of Lived Experience • Christian Karner
10 Encompassment and its Discontents: The Rmeet and the Lowland Lao • Guido Sprenger
11 Debating Grammars: Arguments and Prospects • Gerd Baumann and Andre Gingrich
Notes on Contributors
Subject Index
Name Index