Cultural Essentialism and Cultural Anxiety

Abstract

`Culturespeak' (Hannerz) is everywhere, but what is `loose on the streets', says Wikan, is typically an `old model' of culture, which `anthropologists have done their share to spread'. Whereas she wants to denounce this model (and reproach anthropologists for endorsing it), we should try to understand how and why, not just culture, but essentialist versions of culture have such popular grip; and why anxiety about `our' culture now seems ubiquitous, permeating much contemporary political and media rhetoric, among both `majority' and `minority' populations, and across political and religious spectra. This is a complex issue, and this article is a preliminary study, set mainly within the context of contemporary Europe, of a set of issues that require systematic, local-level, and comparative investigation. Not particularly concerned with anthropology's own internal arguments, the article ends with some pessimistic conclusions about the room for anthropological intervention in contemporary public debates about culture.