Introduction

Remapping Mediterranean anthropology

Bibliographic Data

ID2156571
AuthorsNaor Ben-Yehoyada (0000-0002-4224-501X), Naor Ben‐yehoyada (Schlumberger (Ireland), corresponding author), Heath Cabot (0000-0002-5705-7660), Paul A Silverstein
Year2020
Volume31
Issue1
Pages1-21
Publication date2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory and Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0275-7206 • E-ISSN: 1477-2612
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/02757206.2019.1684274
OpenAlexW3006573376
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited128

We introduce this special issue, which re-examines the fluctuating fortunes of the Mediterranean in anthropology and ask what it offers for contemporary anthropological explorations. We locate the Mediterranean within the history of anthropological (and more broadly, ethnographic) development of core ideas and methodologies concerning personhood, narrative, and culture making. Our approach to the study of the Mediterranean focuses less on why anthropologists abandoned a notion of regional cultural unity, and more on the bases through which such unity is performed and on the concepts and categories which anthropologists might recuperate to account for such performances, even in the wake of their rejection of ‘cultural areas’ as such. Such an analytical move requires the remapping of the Mediterranean as a regional formation that is both multi-scalar and transnational. We argue that the Mediterranean must be approached alongside other attempts to critically remap space and human and ecological connections in anthropology and at is margins; that the study of the Mediterranean should converse with recent developments in the study of sea and oceanic worlds, whether from a historical anthropological or transnational/transregional perspective. At the same time, we outline the benefits of paying attention to the unique place that the Mediterranean might occupy among such maritime worlds. Such a Mediterranean projects a kaleidoscopic vision, combining not just premodern pasts and modern presents, but also a long and conflictual present perfect, in which past and present processes enliven each other, underwriting possible futures

Archaeology · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Mediterranean climate · Narrative · Premise · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Philosophy

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