Anthropology in Action

Almost thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher infamously declared that there is no such thing as society. She was followed, a few years later, by anthropologists eager to dismantle the concept of society, albeit for really quite different reasons. Maybe this time the anthropologists got there ahead of the politicians. Some twenty-five years after anthropologists seriously started to question their particular multiculturalism, politicians of quite some influence have declared it defunct.

Preface

This is the first in what we intend to be a series of practically focused and reflective articles by anthropologists who work in policy or practice, discussing and sharing their experiences of ‘engaged’ anthropology.

—Christine McCourt, Editor, May 2011

This article is a discussion on cultural identity and belonging, focusing on some examples of people who are articulating or 'doing' identity in the Scottish Hebrides. In particular, it explores a re-articulation of cultural identity and belonging, not as the essential root or representation of social inclusion but as an ongoing production or creation of social relations, processes and practices, including rootedness and connectedness. In doing so, the paper underlines the need to negotiate cultural identity forwards, as open, with practical political consequences for our understanding and articulation of social inclusion, belonging and citizenship.

Whatever Happened to Dominant Discourse?

This article explores conflicting approaches to British citizenship through claims to universalism and difference respectively. It focuses on displaced Chagos islanders in the U.K. to show how an evidently unique case was confronted by the universalizing policies of the U.K. government. First, most displaced Chagos islanders and their second-generation descendants have been awarded U.K. citizenship, but three key limitations - concerning discrimination against 'illegitimacy', one's date of departure from Chagos, and restrictions on the transmission of nationality to subsequent generations - exclude other people who are also considered to be members of the extended Chagossian community. Second, those Chagossians who decide to migrate to the U.K. face significant hurdles in their attempts to establish habitual residence and integrate into the welfare system. The article reveals how Chagossian pleas for preferential treatment - in recognition of their particular history of forced displacement, dispossession and suffering in exile - have been thwarted by the U.K. government's purported commitment to the equal rights of all British citizens.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Dumfries and Galloway, this article describes how Conservative Party activists put a variety of discursive artefacts to work as they sought to mass produce and distribute leaflets during the 2003 local Government and Scottish Parliament elections. The leaflet, called In Touch, rendered explicit the need to demonstrate that a political candidate and political party are connected (in touch) with a wider community. This leaflet was therefore designed to invoke a set of connections between person (the candidate), place (the Council Ward/community) and political party (the Conservatives) that might register with even the most disinterested elector. At the same time, the production of these leaflets facilitated the generation of an activist network amongst the party's volunteer base, which exhausted itself by the time Polling Day passed. I argue that addressing logistical and organizational questions - that is, activist methodology - in the production of the In Touch leaflet focused the attention of political activists more than the 'issues' on which they intended to campaign, which were 'found' or 'produced' as artefacts or contrivances of activist labour. In addressing such questions, Tory strategists hoped to 'make (a) difference' given that they tended to view previous campaigns to have been executed in an amateur and disorganized fashion. Through the sheer scale of their production and distribution throughout Dumfries and Galloway, it was hoped that the In Touch leaflets would produce social as well as electoral effects.

Au Pair. Zuzana Búriková and Daniel Miller, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010, ISBN: 0-7456-5011-1. 240pp. Hb: £50, Pb: £15.99.

Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India. Henrike Donner, London: Ashgate, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-7546-4942-7. 230pp. Hb £55.

The Force of Domesticity: Filipina Migrants and Globalization. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, New York: New York University Press, 2008, ISBN: 0-8147-6734-6. 224pp. Pb $22.

Anthropology in Action is always happy to hear from potential reviewers at all stages in their academic careers. We welcome reviews of around 500 words for a single book, but we are also keen to include reviews comparing two or more works, for which the word length is negotiable. We currently have a number of books awaiting review. If you are interested in reviewing any of the books on the list below, please contact the reviews editor, Michaela Benson (M.Benson@bristol.ac.uk). However, please also be aware that we can request recent publications (within the last year) from publishers, so please feel free to let us know of any books that you would like to review within the field of applied anthropology, and we will do our best to get them for you.