Mathur, Chandana (2015) Anthropology and the Irish Encounter. American Anthropologist, 117. pp. 145-146. ISSN 0002-7294

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Abstract

In their discussion of ancestral versus contemporary anthropology in Ireland, Keith Egan and Fiona Murphy (this issue) do not draw a parallel distinction, quite probably deliberately, between “metropolitan” and “native” anthropologies. Positing a category of “native anthropology” opens up an explosive set of issues about the claim to be “native”—all the more combustible in a place that has known settler colonialism since the 12th century, tidalwaves of out-migration (and consequently a vast and tuned-in diaspora) due to famine in the 19th and economic stagnation in the 20th century, and a total demographic makeover through in-migration in the past two decades. Nonetheless, even though they do not resort to this distinction, Egan and Murphy are likely to agree that they are describing an Irish version of a quandary that is all too familiar to native anthropologists from marginal anthropological traditions, predominantly in the postcolonial world: namely, what is to be done when the acknowledged gold standard of metropolitan ethnographic writing renders your home place in a way that is unrecognizable to you?

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Anthropology; Irish Encounter;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology
Item ID:	8375
Depositing User:	Dr. Chandana Mathur
Date Deposited:	27 Jun 2017 14:57
Journal or Publication Title:	American Anthropologist
Publisher:	American Anthropological Association
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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