Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere

by Jean-Loup Amselle

This work seeks to reverse the perspective and reasoning of anthropology and to develop an alternative mode of conceiving culture that would not automatically privilege the colonizing West. That necessarily involves a critique of the "ethnological reason" that extracts elements from their context, aestheticizes them, and then uses their supposed differences to classify types of political, economic, or religious ensembles. Such "reason" yields classical oppositions like the state versus segmentary societies, market versus subsistence economies, and Islam or Christianity versus paganism.
As an alternative, the author opposes to exclusionary categories a "mestizo logic" that sees social phenomena as situated on a continuum and accentuates indistinction and the originary syncretism in all cultures and other ways of categorizing human life. The book's rich source material is drawn from the author's fifteen years of fieldwork and research in West Africa.

Genres: Anthropology

207 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Thor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amselle takes a view of cultural identity from the perspective of those being identified - in this case the formal societies of pre-colonial West Africa (yes, these existed), how their elements were removed from context, re-organized through the lens of Western social structure, and defined in terms of their distinctions from the colonizers (for example, Christian/Islam vs. Pagan). The alternative to this "ethnography" is "Mestizo Logic" seeing cultural differences and identities along a continuum vs. parsed into stages. In this sense, it made me more aware of my own"us v. them" introflection, at basic, and helped me begin a journey into an awareness of the ways we are segmented as individuals (beyond among individual) there is a continually adapting, collective form that defies the administration, management, and control of us through data.

One example to try in pushing back on this - set up your next profile account with others - acting as an "individual". You will find that continuum of connection - while still recognizing your individuality; perhaps even more so.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amselle begins from a similar proposition explored by Nicholas Thomas in Out of Time – that the logic of ethnography and the logic of history are different and lead to major difficulties in trying to work in both disciplines. His concern, however, is not Thomas's one of the ways anthropology can accommodate historical outlooks (rather than the past), but with a critique of the tendencies in ethnography and anthropology to construct types. He makes a powerful that there is a tendency in anthropology, based in the logic of ethnography (or what he calls ethnological reason), to decontextualise data to define types: society X has a matrilineal system, that society Y is a non state, segmentary society and so forth, and thereby freeze them in time – usually the point of colonial contact. He bases his critique in the tendency of ethnography, especially in colonial and formerly colonial settings, to treat its societies as discrete and hermetically contained. Central to his case is deep seated rejection of 'origins', and the quest for a pristine original society, and as a result, his framework demands an understanding of identity and social relations as always already in a state of flux. In this way his approach is similar to other anthropologists (such as Marshall Sahlins) who argue that the more things stay the same, the more they change. I got a little lost in the detailed ethnographic data in places – in part because it centres on the area we now know as the Mali-Guinea-Ivory Coast border areas, about which I know almost nothing, but even with that the argument is clear. What is more, it is based on a solid reflexive analysis (and in places criticism) of his own work. Smart, and able to admit mistakes!