Others who count: Distant outsiders and Neapolitan selves

Brett Thomas Bogart, Purdue University

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative research in Naples (at intervals, 2000-2002), this study explores facets of Arjun Appadurai's influential proposition that cross-border "flows" of people and cultural artifacts render the imagination more potent than in previous epochs. The augmented imagination, this proposition holds, allows social actors to transcend the limits entailed by local culture, as when, in particular, such actors construct new identities for themselves. This proposition entails notions of reflexive awareness of, critical distance from, and the externalization of cultural meaning systems that have lain within actors--and so of a transcendence of established orders that would bear liberatory political implications. This exploration employs a two-part strategy. The first part develops the notion of a tradition of representing Naples at whose core is " folklorismo", i.e., a stigmatizing otherization of the city's inhabitants. Doing this allows this study to pose the question to what extent an imagination potentiated by cross-border flows transcends the limits imposed by this tradition. The second part examines identity negotiations in interactions between researcher and Neapolitans. Analysis of negotiations posits an interpretive scheme produced by exposure to the tradition of "folkloristic" representations and governing interactional conduct. This study suggests that, through this interpretive scheme, the researcher's interlocutors impute to me an attitude akin to that of outsiders. Hence, this study attempts a nuanced approach, embracing reproduction by way of the forces to which Appadurai ascribes a society- and culture-transforming action. Throughout, a critical stance is maintained toward the "epochalism" in Appadurai's claims.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Watson, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Cultural anthropology

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