ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly discusses identity politics and issues of public authority in local political arenas. There is no self-evident consensus on what constitutes genuine anthropology. For some, anthropology is defined by its fieldwork-based methodology; for others, it is its nonreductionist commitment to fleshing out complex causalities from the empirical foliage of thick description. For others still, anthropology is simply a general social science of non-Western societies. The demand for self-reflection implies incessant interrogation of one’s own relationship to the value-claims of the observed actors. Although no transcendental authority is claimed for this version of anthropology, it reflects concerns common to the endeavours in the discipline. Anthropologists vent little enthusiasm for democratization as a self-fulfilling liberal narrative of the modern state. Ethnic politics is commonly stigmatized as ‘uncivil’ and thus anathema to democratization, in that it promotes divisive rather than inclusive social solidarities.
