ABSTRACT
The social sciences have recently turned their attention to the construction of identity in and through discourses that fashion communities, often naturalised as primordial (Anderson 1983). Anthropologists too have slowly begun to turn their attention to the study of written texts produced by different societies (Messick 1993). A recent edited volume raises a number of issues with regard to the ways in which various types of written texts can be made the object of anthropological analysis (Archetti 1994). 2
