Richard Handler

Forum: Identity - Discussing a Vague Concept

Kaufmann’s books have been examining the issue of identity in a very prolific way for several years. Here he offers a clear description of some of the most important challenges that today’s identity beliefs – religious and nationalist for example – pose to modernity. In this commentary, however, I would like to consider some basic aspects of the reasoning that emerges from his latest article. In particular, I will focus on his personal conception of identity and try to follow his spirit. In this way I will attempt – even if only through some fleeting thought – to contribute to probe and structure the debate on a notion that is often misused by researchers. It seems to me that sociology is now faced with the need to pay greater attention to the contributions, albeit quite divergent, offered by other disciplines (i.e. philosophy of the mind, mind sciences, linguistic anthropology and, above all, ethnomethodological sociology) in order to better understand the dynamics that sociologists describe using the term ‘identity’. ddAccording to the point of view I would like to unpack – as a stimulus to a discussion that has also (perhaps unfortunately) political implications – Kaufmann at times appears as the most evolved and reformative pole of an overall still ‘traditional’ way of considering identity. It is true that in Europe various politico-cultural formations oppose more and more

Voicing the ancestors: Readings in memory of George Stocking

In this Forum, four anthropologists have chosen an “ancestral” figure to give voice to. Anthropologists’ ancestors are generally teachers, mentors, or, less proximally, canonized scholars of prior generations. Anthropologists draw on their ancestors for theoretical wisdom and practical guidance. Yet ancestors are not always shared broadly across our discipline, and they can easily fall into oblivion. Giving voice to them, publicly, allows each contributor to comment on an important scholar and invites readers to renew their acquaintance with disciplinary ghosts who still have much to teach us.