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Imagined Differences: Hatred and the Construction of Identity. Günther Schlee, ed. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 280 pp.
What can (or should) anthropology do to work against contemporary violence? Some ethnographers write and teach to evoke sympathy for suffering victims, hoping to depict them as worthy of restoration or recognition from the powerful. Others try to explain the processes that depict people as so utterly different that they are treated as enemies unworthy of dignity or protection. Imagined Differences is a collection of ethnographies, mostly by European-based scholars, that examines such processes of differentiation in times of hatred. Following Anderson's notion of "imagined communities," whether a nation or ethnicity, these 11 case studies with two introductions (by Gunther Schlee and Elwertj put such social construction in antagonistic contexts. Like Frederik Earth's examples of boundary making, or even Edward Said's critical studies of Orientalism, this kind of anthropology illustrates how identity is constructed dialectically-within and against an opposing other-and not essentially-or made up of key features-as it is often portrayed.
Most authors in this volume lean toward a model of group identity formation that privileges political necessities...