Debating Authenticity: Concepts of Modernity in Anthropological Perspective

Marc Notes: Originally published: 2013.; Includes bibliographical references and index.; The longing for authenticity, on an individual or collective level, connects the search for external expressions to internal orientations. What is largely referred to as production of authenticity is a reformulation of cultural values and norms within the ongoing process of modernity, impacted by globalization and contemporary transnational cultural flows. This collection interrogates the notion of authenticity from an anthropological point of view and considers authenticity in terms of how meaning is produced in and through discourses about authenticity. Publisher Marketing:"Debating Authenticity presents the reader with a rich collection of ethnographic case studies, unpacking the complexity of the concept in various social settings across the globe." . The Australian Journal of Anthropology The longing for authenticity, on an individual or collective level, connects the search for external expressions to internal orientations. What is largely referred to as production of authenticity is a reformulation of cultural values and norms within the ongoing process of modernity, impacted by globalization and contemporary transnational cultural flows. This collection interrogates the notion of authenticity from an anthropological point of view and considers authenticity in terms of how meaning is produced in and through discourses about authenticity. Incorporating case studies from four continents, the topics reach from art and colonialism to exoticism-primitivism, film, ritual and wilderness. Some contributors emphasise the dichotomy between the academic use of the term and the one deployed in public spaces and political projects. All, however, consider authenticity as something that can only be understood ethnographically, and not as a simple characteristic or category used to distinguish some behaviors, experiences or material things from other less authentic versions. Thomas Fillitz is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna. He has been a visiting professor at the Universite des Sciences et Technologies Lille-1 (2001, 2003), at the Universite Lumiere Lyon-2 (2008), and at Universite Paris Descartes (2011). A. Jamie Saris is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology at the National University of Ireland-Maynooth and Co-Chair of the Combat Diseases of Poverty Consortium. He has been working more than fifteen years in medical and psychological anthropology in Ireland, North America and Africa.