ABSTRACT
The last generation of anthropology has been characterized by the study of culture. Beginning in the 1960s, anthropologists explored culture as a ‘system of shared meanings’ (Geertz 1973:3-30) and ‘a forest of symbols’ (Turner 1967), in particular examining the symbolic and ritual structures of societies and their functional coherence. However, attention to the problems of access to the structures of power and questions about social agency and resistance, combined with the anarchic effects of post-structural theory, increasingly caused researchers to regard culture as the outcome of social practice which could not be read as coherent ‘constructions’. The production and reproduction of shared meanings-the work of making culture-has come to be regarded as a problematic and contested process, or historically specific processes, rather than a single, automatic or hegemonic imposition. This shift has initiated the consideration of nation-states as cultural products and of nationalism as a cultural process of collective identity formation. Social scientists, particularly since Foucault, now scrutinize the ideologies and practice of the makers and implementers of national power, those who create and maintain national-cultural identities. We have come to realize that powerful nationalists have a vested interest in culture-in finding commonalities among populations, in classifying and delimiting communities, in documenting the authenticity of culture and in identifying uniqueness.
