Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe Author(s): Verena Stolcke Reviewed work(s): Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 1, Special Issue: Ethnographic Authority and Cultural Explanation (Feb., 1995), pp. 1-24 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2744220 . Accessed: 20/01/2012 06:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number i, FebruaryI995 ? I995 byThe Wenner-GrenFoundation for Anthropological Research. All rightsreserved OOII-3204/95/360i-0003$2.00 (D.Phil.,I970). She conductedfield and archivalresearch in Cuba in I967-68 and in Sao Paulo, Brazil,between I973 and I979. She is the authorof Marriage, Class, and Colourin Nineteenth- SIDNEY W. MINTZ LECTURE CenturyCuba (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, I974, re- printedby the Universityof Michigan Press in i989), Planters, FOR I993 Workers,and Wives:Class Conflictand GenderRelations on SaioPaulo Plantations,i850-i980 (Oxford:St. Antony's/Macmil- lan, i988); "Women'sLabours: The Naturalisationof Social In- equalityand Women'sSubordination," in Of Marriageand the Market,edited by K. Young,C. Wolkowitz,and R. McCullagh (London:Routledge and KeganPaul, i98i), "New Reproductive Talking Culture Technologies-Old Fatherhood,"Reproductive and GeneticEngi- neeringI (i), and "Is Sex to Genderas Race Is to Ethnicity?"in GenderedAnthropology, edited by Teresadel Valle (London: Routledge,I993). The presentpaper was submittedin finalform New Boundaries,New Rhetorics I5 VI 94. of Exclusion in Europe' Es gibt zwei Sortenvon Ratten, by Verena Stolcke die hungrigenund die satten; die Satten bleiben vergniigtzuhaus, die Hungrigenwandern aus . Oh weh, sie sind schon in der Ndh. HEINRICH HEINE In the contemporarydebate concerning European integration and the "problem"of Third World immigration no less thanin devel- and fromnow on as much in the soci- opmentsin anthropologyin the past decade,the boundedness of Everywhere, culturesand culturaldifference have gainednew prominence.An- ety of originas in the host society,[the immigrant] thropologyneeds not onlyto explorehow globalizationaffects calls fora completerethinking of the legitimate the discipline'sclassical subjectsbut also to paymore attention bases of citizenshipand of the relationshipbetween to the new waysin whichcultural differences and cleavagesare the state and the nation or nationality.An absent conceptualizedat its source.In effect,the political right in Eu- ropehas in thepast decadedeveloped a politicalrhetoric of exclu- presence,he obliges us to question not only the reac- sion in whichThird World immigrants, who proceedin part tions of rejection which, takingthe state as an ex- fromits ex-colonies,are construedas posinga threatto thena- pression of the nation, are vindicated by claiming to tionalunity of the "host" countriesbecause theyare culturally base citizenshipon commonalityof language and different.This rhetoricof exclusionhas generallybeen identified culture(if not "race") but also the assimilationist as a new formof racism. I argue,instead, that, rather than as- sertingdifferent endowments of human races, it postulatesa pro- "generosity"that, confidentthat the state, armed pensityin humannature to rejectstrangers. This assumptionun- with education, will know how to reproducethe na- derliesa radicalopposition between nationals and immigrantsas tion, would seek to conceal a universalistchauvin- foreignersinformed by a reifiednotion of bounded and distinct, ism. localizednational-cultural identity and heritagethat is employed to rationalizethe call forrestrictive immigration policies. Follow- PIERRE BOURDIEU inga systematiccomparison of the contrastingconceptual struc- turesof the two doctrines,I concludethat the contemporarycul- The uniqueness of European culture,which emerges turalfundamentalism of the politicalright is, withrespect to fromthe historyof the diversityof regional and na- traditionalracism, both old and new. It is old in thatit drawsfor tional constitutesthe basic prerequisitefor its argumentativeforce on theunresolved contradiction in the cultures, modernconception of the nation-statebetween an organicistand European union. a voluntaristidea ofbelonging. It is new in that,because racism COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES has becomediscredited politically, it attributesthe alleged incom- patibilitybetween different cultures to an incapacityof different As anthropologygradually outgrows postmodernist self- culturesto communicatethat is inherentin humannature. scrutinyand cultural self-examinationand moves back into the real world,neither the worldnor the discipline VERENA STOLCKE is professorof social anthropologyin the De- partamentode Historiade SociedadesPrecapitalistas y Antropo- is any longerthe same. Anthropologistshave leamed to logia Social ofthe UniversidadAut6noma de Barcelona.Born in be more sensitiveto the formidabledifficulties involved Germanyin I938, she was educatedat OxfordUniversity in making sense of cultural diversitywithout losing sightof sharedhumanity. At the same time,the notions of cultureand culturaldifference, anthropology's classi- i. This paperwas delivered,as the I993 SidneyW. MintzLecture to the Departmentof Anthropology of the JohnsHopkins Univer- cal stock-in-trade,have become ubiquitous in the popu- sityon Novemberi5, I993. It is based on researchconducted ir lar and political languagein which Westerngeopolitical i99i-92 whileI was a JeanMonnet fellow at theEuropean Univer conflictsand realignmentsare beingphrased. Anthropol- sityInstitute in Florence.I thankespecially my fellow fellows Mi ogists in recent years have paid heightenedcritical at- chael Harbsmeier,Eric Heilman,and Sol Picciottofor the many fruitfuldiscussions we had on thetopics I raiseand Ram6nVald6& tentionto the many ways in which Westerneconomic of the UniversidadAut6noma de Barcelonafor his commentsor and culturalhegemony has invadedthe restof the world an earlierversion. and to how "other" cultureshave resistedand reworked T 2 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36, Number i, FebruaryI995 theseinsidious influences. How these "others"are being the slogan "ForeignersOut!" There is a growingsense politicallyand culturallyrethought by the West, where that Europeans need to develop a feelingof shared cul- the idea of cultural distinctnessis being endowed with tureand identityof purpose in orderto providethe ideo- new divisive force,has, however,attracted surprisingly logical support for European economic and political little interestamong anthropologists.I want to address union that will enable it to succeed. But the idea of a one major instance of contemporaryculture-bounded supranational culturally integratedEurope and how political rhetoric. much space is to be accorded to national and regional SidneyMintz has workedfor many years towardun- cultures and identities are matters of intense dispute coveringthe logic and power of racism in systems of because of the challenge to national sovereigntiesthey dominationand exclusion in the New World.It is surely are variously felt to pose (Gallo I989; Cassen I993; appropriateto focus my lecture in his honor on the re- Commissionof the EuropeanCommunities I987, I992). surgenceof essentialistideologies in the Old World.On By contrast,immigrants, in particularthose fromthe one of his tripsto Paris he himselfprophesied some of poorSouth (and,more recently,also fromthe East) who these developmentsmore than 2o yearsago, noting that, seek shelterin the wealthyNorth, have all overWestern whereas issues of race were absent fromFrench anthro- Europecome to be regardedas undesirable,threatening pology,in contrastwith the North American variety, strangers,aliens. The extracommunitarianimmigrants because of the differentpositions the discipline's sub- already"in our midst" are the targetsof mountinghos- jects (internallyor externallycolonial) occupied in rela- tilityand violence as politiciansof the rightand conser- tion to the respectivenational communities,France was vative governmentsfuel popular fears with a rhetoric beginningto experienceracism as ever-growingnumbers Dfexclusion that extols national identitypredicated on ofimmigrants arrived from its ex-colonies(Mintz I 97 I). zulturalexclusiveness. The alarmingspread of hostilityand violence in Eu- The social and political tensionsthat extracommuni- rope against immigrantsfrom the Third Worldhas pro- tarianimmigration has provokedin a contextof succes- voked much soul-searchingin the past decade over the 3ive economic crises have been accompanied by a resurgenceof the old demon of racism in a new guise. I heightenedconcern over national culturalidentities that want to propose,however, that a perceptibleshift in the has eroded the cosmopolitanhopes professedin the af- rhetoricof exclusion