Reimagining Alterities: The Formation of Identities through Memory,History, and Place

Anthropologists have firmly established the need to attend to the paradoxes of mobile cultural and symbolic forms—these portable imaginaries of belonging or exclusion—during periods of transnational crisis and restructuring. In this article, I examine how formations of selfhood and otherness have come to public visibility in the context of globalization. My review of recent anthropological publications scrutinizes the range of possible methodological approaches to social identity practices, both in the past and present. Although contemporary scholars seek to refine anthropological insights on the plausible linkages between identity and alterity, the reliance on select methodological frames produces corresponding limitations in research focus and interpretative acuity.