"Virtually all of the scholarship on identity sees it as something that comes from the bottom-up. Martinez Novo recognizes the popular side of identity formation, but also looks at the process from the top down. How do more powerful actors-state institutions, intellectuals, elites, NGOs, etc.-try, in an imperfect and messy way, to mold collective identities? Martinez Novo not only poses this rather interesting problem, but investigates it with an innovative methodology and supports it with sound scholarship."
-Steve Striffler, author of In the Shadows of State and Capital
2 comments:
Interesting. And timely, too, as I was JUST going to tell you to download the article that appeared on this topic in the last issue of Am. Ethnologist: M. Pelican on distinctions between autochthony and indigeneity. I'm still reading it (at 30 min intervals here and there, welcome to my schedule), but I am really BUGGED by the fact that this author cites neither of Ron N.'s books on this topic. And this was peer-reviewed? Maybe it's because the new journal editor, DD is an Africanist and this particular case study is African--and that is the *precise playing field where this term (Indgty) tends to collapse..but still...not a single citation of at least a handful of relatively important works/people who've written (and said thus far, much the same thing) on this topic vis a vis the politics of Indigenous identity claims. Anyway, if you can't download it from Anthrosource, let me know.
I am making it through my copy of AE in between phone calls to older gentlemen! I really have only been looking at the book reviews so far (I like to read the articles in one sitting)- that's how I found the book, but then amazon also recommended it for me... good job amazon!
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