Contents and Abstracts: AE Forum: Exclusionary Projects and Anthropological Analysis Provocation: Between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some thoughts on the new Europe Matti Bunzl The apparent resurgence of hostility against Jews has been a prominent theme in recent discussions of Europe. At the same time, the adversities of the Muslim populations on the continent have received increasing attention as well. In this article, I attempt a historical and cultural clarification of the key terms in this debate. I argue against the common impulse to analogize anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Instead, I offer an analytic framework that locates the two phenomena in different projects of exclusion. Anti-Semitism was invented in the late 19th century to police the ethnically pure nation-state; Islamophobia, by contrast, is a formation of the present, marshaled to safeguard a supranational Europe. Whereas traditional anti-Semitism has run its historical course with the supersession of the nation-state, Islamophobia threatens to become the defining condition of the new Europe. [anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, European Union, Europe] Commentaries The politics of cultural unification, secularism, and the place of Islam in the new Europe Esra Özyürek Anthropological analyses of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in Europe Andre Gingrich Discerning the ghosts and the interest of the living Jonathan Boyarin Xenophobia, the state, and capitalism Karen Brodkin Welcome to the new Europe Dominic Boyer Commentary on Bunzl John Bowen Racialized nations, evangelizing Christianity, police states, and imperial power: Missing in action in Bunzl’s new Europe Nina Glick Schiller Rejoinder Methods and politics Matti Bunzl Legacies and Futures Edward Said and the political present Nadia Abu El-Haj This article offers a reading of Edward Said’s legacy. It engages Said’s scholarly and political insights, on the one hand, and his vision of and life as an intellectual, on the other hand. The article focuses on his broader conceptual and methodological interventions, his analysis of the politics of empire (in the Middle East), and his passionate attachment to the question of Palestine. It also contextualizes Said’s work in light of the contemporary political moment, arguing that he and that for which he is seen to stand have emerged as key flash points in the latest U.S. culture wars. [Edward Said, empire, Orientalism, War on Terror, intellectuals] Between heritage and countermemory: Varieties of historical representation in a West German community John R. Eidson Contrasting views of the past are often understood in terms of dichotomies (e.g., hegemonic–counterhegemonic and regressive–progressive), but ethnographic data gathered in a German community suggest the need for a more differentiated approach. The public presentation of history in that community corresponds to one of three conventions: (1) the commemoration of the founding of local institutions by their members, (2) “hometown history,” an avocation of the local bourgeoisie, and (3) citizens’ initiatives for coming to terms with the Nazi past. German-area specialists have tended to dismiss the first two types and to valorize the third, but different representations of the past in the present are best viewed as varieties of symbolic capital, which members of different social groups employ in the institutional settings to which they have access and in which they are authorized to play active roles. [historical memory, heritage, countermemory, distinction, politics of recognition, symbolic capital, Germany] An “impossible” transmission: Youth religious memories in Guinea–Conakry David Berliner Memory, persistence, and cultural transmission are hot topics in anthropology today. Contributing to an increasing anthropological interest in youth agency, in this article I invite readers to look at youth as a crucial site for understanding issues of religious memory and cultural transmission. In the past five decades, Bulongic people (Guinea–Conakry) have undergone significant religious changes caused by the introduction of Islam, which has led to the official disappearance of pre-Islamic rituals. In this article, I explore how young Bulongic remember a pre-Islamic past that they have never experienced. I argue that, to understand how they assimilate and perpetuate this religious heritage, one must examine the subtle processes of intergenerational transmission through which their memories are dynamically shaped. [memory, crisis of transmission, youth, pre-Islamic religion, intergenerational relations, Guinea–Conakry] Encounters with the “peasant”: Memory work, masculinity, and low fertility in Italy Elizabeth L. Krause The peasant in Italy has all but vanished as an exemplar of an economic way of life but as a social figure has relevance to trends such as the transformation to small families. Ethnographic “encounters” provide the basis for my explorations into the trauma and meaning of the historical experiences that find expression in Italian women’s low fertility rates. Current family-making practices have resulted from historical adjustments deeply linked to economic shifts that involved the unraveling of a patriarchal hierarchy and necessitated a subsequent reworking of gendered subjects situated in new socioeconomic conditions. An ethnographic focus on memory work reveals that the social figure of the peasant persists in meaningful ways that shape people’s family-making practices. [ethnography, memory work, peasants, masculinity, low fertility, Italy, Europe] Review essay: Family firms amidst the creative destruction of capitalism George E. Marcus Producing Culture and Capital: Family Firms in Italy. Sylvia Junko Yanagisako. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. xv + 223 pp., figures, tables, notes, references, index. In terms of anthropology’s past interests, the study of family firms seems a “natural” way into the ethnography of contemporary capitalism. True, but as Sylvia Yanagisako’s rich and sensitive study demonstrates, this is so by productively frustrating central ideas in anthropology like “culture” and “kinship” without resolution in alternative concepts. [capitalism, family firms, entrepreneurship] Indigeneity and Instrumentality Image and instrumentality in a Xavante politics of existential recognition: The public outreach work of Eténhiritipa Pimentel Barbosa Laura R. Graham This analysis of one Xavante group’s innovative projects to represent Xavante culture to nonindigenous audiences reveals multiple and complex perceptions of instrumentalities as well as political goals. Unlike many contemporary Native (Amazonian and other) groups that use aspects of their culture to attract support and achieve concrete political goals, local objectives are relatively abstract and future oriented, having to do with public “image” and “existential recognition.” Analysis illustrates that local ideas about indigenous cultural displays aimed primarily at nonindigenous audiences, including “identity politics” and apparently straightforward cultural commodification, may not neatly correspond with anthropologists’ or other outsiders’ expectations. Overly narrow interpretive foci may cause anthropologists to overlook the potential for multiple and complex objectives and a diversity of locally significant dimensions. [Native Amazonia (Brazil), identity politics, politics of recognition, existential recognition, performance, public sphere, cultural commodification] Global movements and local historical events: Itelmens of Kamchatka appeal to the United Nations David Koester In this article, I examine the institutional, cultural, and discursive foundations of a historical event. I explicate global, transnational, national, intercultural, ethnic, regional, local, and personal realms of understanding as well as a range of discursive and pragmatic strategies as they came into play in a schoolroom meeting that led to the writing of a letter to the United Nations for help. The case presented is that of a group of people in a small, majority-indigenous village in Kamchatka in the Russian Far East, who, in 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet government and its support network, decided to turn to the United Nations for help. [structure and event, collective will and agency, indigenous movement, Itelmens, Kamchatka, Russia] Debating Units Eritrea on-line: Diaspora, cyberspace, and the public sphere Victoria Bernal For Eritreans in diaspora, identities are deterritorialized, one’s most pressing communication may be with far-flung strangers in cyberspace, and one’s political engagement is centered on a distant homeland. Eritrean experiences, thus, seem to bring together various qualities that scholars have been grappling with in trying to chart the implications of the infotech revolution and life on-line, in seeking to understand processes of transnationalism and globalization, and in charting the elusive construction of community in the postmodern age. Through an analysis of the social history of www.dehai.org, a website developed by Eritreans in diaspora, I explore the ways that new forms of technological and geographical mobility are changing the conditions not just of capitalist production but also of knowledge production and the constitution of publics, public spheres, communities, and nations. [cyberspace, public sphere, politics, diaspora, community, conflict, Eritrea] Culture, state, and security in Europe: The case of citizenship and integration policy in Estonia Gregory Feldman In this article, I examine how a territorial imaginary conflating culture, territory, nation, and security allows “elites of statecraft” in Europe to frame citizenship and integration policy as (inter)national security matters. Focusing on post-Soviet Estonia, I argue that this imaginary legitimized the denial of citizenship to Soviet-era Russian speakers and enabled the government’s integration policy objective of creating the “Estonian cultural domain.” Drawing on historical, archival, and ethnographic research, I demonstrate how the invocation of national security justified these events and how the territorial imaginary structured the making of integration policy from the 1991 reestablishment of independence to E.U. accession in 2004. [state, elites, policy, nation, security]