Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Towards an Anthropology of the Mediterranean

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02757200600624339

1477-2612

Christian Bromberger,

Diverse Cultural and Historical Studies

Abstract Three contradictory images emerge when one examines the disparate works by historians and anthropologists that have taken the Mediterranean world as their subject: a Mediterranean of exchanges and encounters, a Mediterranean of conflicts and hatred, and a Mediterranean made of societies revealing, beyond the schisms that divide them, "family resemblances". In this article, the author proposes another way of seeing and perceiving the Mediterranean world, neither as an entity united by the same culture, nor as a juxtaposition of heterogeneous blocs, but rather as a system of complementary differences that, according to the context, can result in well‐meaning co‐existence or bloody confrontation. Keywords: Anthropology of the MediterraneanIntercultural RelationsConflict Notes [1] On Mediterranean history, see the synthesis edited by Carpentier and Lebrun (1998 Carpentier, J. and Lebrun, F. 1998. Histoire de la Méditerranée, Paris: Le Seuil. [Google Scholar]). [2] Regarding this astonishing monarch, see the classic work of Kantorowicz (2000 Kantorowicz, E. 2000. L'empereur Frédéric II in Kantorowicz, Œuvres, Paris: Gallimard (Quarto). [Google Scholar]). [3] Regarding Alexandria in the contemporary era, see Ilbert (1996 Ilbert, R. 1996. Alexandrie, 1830–1930, histoire d'une communauté citadine, Cairo: IFAO. [Google Scholar]). [4] "It must be repeated," comments Alain de Libera (1999 Libera, A. de. 1999. "Passage des Lumières". In Rencontres d'Averroès. La Méditerranée, frontières et passages, Edited by: Fabre, T. Arles: Actes Sud. [Google Scholar]: 26; emphasis added), "it is a translation within the land of Islam, connected to the Muslim conquest, which made possible the return of Greek science into the Latin world. But Greek science did not arrive alone. Arabic science accompanied it. And further, the figure of the Muslim intellectual from whom came, despite what is said and contrary to all expectations, the earliest version of the European intellectual, the university magister atrium, the professor of philosophy." [5] Regarding these contemporary commercial networks, see Peraldi (2001 Peraldi, M., ed. 2001. Cabas et containers. Activités migrantes informelles et réseaux migrants transfrontaliers, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. [Google Scholar]); Cesari (2002 Cesari, J., ed. 2002. La Méditerranée des réseaux, Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. [Google Scholar]). [6] Regarding this anthropological invention of the Mediterranean, see Bromberger (2001 Bromberger, C. 2001. "Aux trois sources de l'ethnologie du monde méditerranéen dans la tradition française". In L'anthropologie de la Méditerranée, Edited by: Albera, D., Blok, A. and Bromberger, C. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. [Google Scholar], 2002 Bromberger, C. 2002. "Une vision de la Méditerranée, Une manière ethnologique d'être au monde". In Germaine Tillion, une ethnologue dans le siècle, Edited by: Bromberger, C. and Todorov, T. Arles: Actes Sud. [Google Scholar]); Bromberger and Durand (2001 Bromberger, C. and Durand, J.‐Y. 2001. "Faut‐il jeter la Méditerranée avec l'eau du bain?". In L'anthropologie de la Méditerranée, Edited by: Albera, D., Blok, A. and Bromberger, C. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. [Google Scholar]). [7] On the subject of iconophobia, see Goody (1997 Goody, J. 1997. Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fictions, Relics and Sexuality, Oxford: Blackwell. [Google Scholar]); Centlivres (2003 Centlivres, P. 2003. "Images populaires, motifs religieux et fonctions politiques dans le monde islamique contemporain". In La multiplication des images en pays d'islam, Edited by: Heyberger, B. and Naef, S. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag Würzburg. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). [8] Freud used this concept three times in his work: in Psychologie des masses et analyse du moi (Massenpschologie und Ich‐Analyse) (Freud, 2003 [1920]: Vol. 16: 40); Le tabou de la virginité (Das Tabu der Virginität) (Freud, 2002 [1918]: Vol. 15: 86); and Malaise dans la culture (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur) (Freud, 2002 [1930]: Vol. 18: 473–474). In the last work, he wrote: It is always possible to link people to each other in love in a big enough crowd of people, if only there remain others to whom one can show aggression. Once I studied the phenomenon according to which, precisely, neighbouring communities, also close to each other, fight and make fun of each other, like the Spaniards and the Portuguese, the Germans of the North and those of the South, the English and the Scots, etc. I have given this phenomenon the name "narcissism of small differences". … One recognises in this a commodious and relatively anodyne satisfying of the penchant for aggression through which community cohesion is more easily assured. [9] The dragoman (interpreter in the Ottoman Empire) incarnated both the positive figure of a cosmopolitan guide and a tragic hero. "The Empire was suspicious," comments Ismaïl Kadaré (2003 Kadaré, I. 2003. Les quatre interprètes, Paris: Stock. [Google Scholar]: 13). "To them, the knowledge of two languages introduced the unavoidable possibility of cheating, and the masses, from whom the interpreter often came, considered him a 'collaborator'. One suspects the interpreter of betrayal: those who are dominated suspect him of being an accomplice of the dominant, and the dominant of conniving with those they are subjugating."