Talking about culture: Globalization, human rights and anthropology

Culture talk, when analyzed from and within the powerful combination of globalization and human rights discourses, is not exclusively or necessarily a gloss for racism or xenophobia. Rather, as the universally accepted criterion for human belonging and the rights that it confers, culture emerges as the primary means for gaining positive recognition and a valuable place in the emerging global community. People everywhere, as they contend with global flows, express desires for dignity and claim human rights, are therefore invoking, manipulating and solidifying their culture to accord with contemporary discursive demands. Conversely, recognizing its fragmented, invented and historicized nature, many anthropologists are rejecting the reification of culture as they search for alternative ways to express cultural process and human creativity. Following a contextualized analysis of Russians' talk about their culture, and the Black Hebrews' assertions of their once-lost, now-found heritage, the article ends by suggesting that anthropologists reinsert culture into the center of anthropology. But now, instead of an impossibly metaphysical concept or reified trait inventory, culture and its genealogy should be interrogated and studied both as it is described and practiced from the natives' point of view and as embedded within wider social processes of discourse, power and history.