Political Culture, Soft Interventions and Nation Building by Tiffany Jenkins

Author:Tiffany Jenkins [Jenkins, Tiffany]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317643876
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

The Powerful Past: Archaeology, the Past and Identity Politics

The past plays a central part in identity processes. A symbolic or material connection to the past situates and anchors the wider cultural context in which social identities are shaped; the past links one's identity to 'a world already defined' (Friedman 1994, pp. 117-118). The process of situating oneself in the world can be seen as the outcome of an engaged social agency of, often unconscious, selections from the past (Anico and Peralta 2009, p. 1). We select from our myths and histories the aspects which we, as a collective, feel comfortable with and to which we are able to connect. From this constructed social memory we anchor our sense of place in the world. Identity construction is, in other words, an ongoing collective dynamic social process, which relies on concepts of past-present continuity in a shared identity that today may be discussed in both cultural (symbolic) and biological (scientifically verifiable genealogical) terms. A much publicized example of the latter is the establishment of ancestry based on DNA analysis conducted on a group of African American celebrities in the African American Lives project (Gates Jr. 2009, for a critique, see Duster 2008). An uninterrupted cultural and biological link, imagined or 'real', between the people of the past and the contemporary community establishes a sense of kinship and provides an important place in the world. Ties to the past are symbolically represented. They are also significant for how individuals act to maintain their own social ties to the wider community. Repatriation as a process builds on a similar social production of symbolic and genealogical kinship. At the same time it also reproduces the notion that the social relationships have a tangible source and reason for being. As such, repatriation can become a very effective and desired tool for identity production for the group that is involved in it.

Indeed, to become effective, identities must have some kind of materiality (Anico and Peralta 2009, p. 1). Re-use and appropriation of material culture— including monuments and artefacts—can support a political strategy for creating legitimacy and continuity through time. Such practices of re-use and appropriation of the material past may be traced archaeologically to prehistory (Bradley 2002, Artelius 2004). Following an ethno-symbolic view of human communities, concrete material remains assure a durability and 'common consciousness' for ethnic groups that can last through periods of rapid change and endow each community with 'a distinctive symbolic repertoire' (Smith 2009, p. 25). The shared, 'real' and mythological past, and the material remains that provide a concrete connection to that past play a central role in this production of shared identity and community. As the provider of tangible but often ambiguous material remains of that past, archaeology has historically been an attractive partner in this process. A brief overview of the past two centuries of archaeology clearly shows that interpretations of material remains often are highly ideological, and that archaeology has been skilfully used in various political discourses (Trigger 1984). Archaeology

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