Identity Destabilised: Living in an Overheated World

The world is overheated: Too full and too fast; out of sync, contradiction-ridden and unequal. It is the age of the Anthropocene, of humanity’s indelible mark upon the planet. In short, it is globalisation - but not as we know it. This collection explores social identities in today’s ‘overheated’ world, seen from an anthropological perspective. The focus is on contradictions, tensions and paradoxes: How can an identity be stable if its border is constantly shifting? How can a community survive if it is incorporated into a huge entity? How does belonging work in new cities? And what can indigenous peoples do to retain a sense of self in a fast-moving neoliberal world? Ethnographically rich and diverse in its scope, Identity Destabilised contains chapters from many parts of the world, including the Philippines, Israel, Australia, the Cape Verde Islands and Afghanistan. The authors investigate how identity changes in response to contemporary forces, from rapid industrialisation, the enforced return of migrants and the silencing of indigenous groups to sudden population growth in boomtowns and the touristification of local culture.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures and Tables Preface 1. Introduction: The Art of Belonging in an Overheated World - Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Elisabeth Schober 2. Down With Identity! Long Live Humanity! - Jeremy MacClancy 3. Frozen Cosmopolitanism: Coping with Radical Deceleration in Cape Verdean Contexts of Forced Return Migration - Heike Drotbohm 4. ‘We Are All Strangers Here’: Transforming Land and Making Identity in a Desert Boomtown - Astrid B. Stensrud 5. Identifying with Accelerated Change: Modernity Embodied in Gladstone, Queensland - Thomas Hylland Eriksen 6. Guarding the Frontier: On Nationalism and Nostalgia in an Israeli Border Town - Cathrine Thorleifsson 7. Cultural Wounding and Healing: Change as Ongoing Cultural Production in a Remote Indigenous Australian Community - Amanda Kearney 8. Indigenous Endurance amidst Accelerated Change? The U.S. Military, South Korean Investors and the Aeta of Subic Bay, the Philippines - Elisabeth Schober 9. The Politics of Localness: Claiming Gains in Rural Sierra Leone - Robert J. Pijpers 10. Too Many Khans?: Old and New Elites in Afghanistan - Torunn Wimpelmann 11. Do Homosexuals Wear Moustaches? Controversies around the First Montenegrin Pride Parade - Branko Banovic 12. 'We're Far Too Far Down This Road Now to Worry about Morals': The Destabilising of Football Fans' Identities in an Overheated World - Keir Martin 13. Frozen Moments: Visualising the Polity in Times of Overheating - Iver B. Neumann 14. Eurovision Identities: Or, How Many Collective Identities Can One Anthropologist Possess? - Chris Hann Notes on Contributors Index

About the Author :
Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962 – 2024) was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and former President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He was among the most highly cited anthropologists of his generation, and his classic and accessible textbook Small Places, Large Issues remains a cornerstone in anthropology courses. His later books, including Overheating, tackled the important issue of climate change within the discipline. Elisabeth Schober is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, where she is affiliated with the 'Overheating' project. She is also the author of Base Encounters: The US Armed Forces in South Korea (Pluto Press, 2016).

Review :
'This provocative and ethnographically diverse volume illuminates the complexities that shape attempts to reconcile social belonging and self-consciousness in today's world' 'Accelerated change may be a general characteristic of human life today, but the diverse and multi-facetted studies in this volume nevertheless document a significant variety of perceptions, reflections and agency in response to this volatile situation' 'A powerful book ... already a benchmark classic of its discipline'