"Re-embedding"

Lecture #21: "Re-embedding"
Sylva Frisk, Program Director

Disembedding, Review
- Throughout the course, we have discussed several disembedding mechanisms such as the relativisation of space and social relations lifted out of context.
o Scholte expands upon this with his discussion of global social relations.
- These disembedding mechanisms require new modes of analysis.
o International Relations: The nation-state is no longer central in International Relations.
o Anthropology: There is a need to study culture in new ways. Culture is now seen as neither rooted nor bounded but deterritorialized, fluid and unbounded. Anthropologists now study culture as it is experienced and thus examine different voices within a cultural context. Anthropologists now ask: Who is allowed to talk? Who is silenced/ suppressed? It is commonly agreed that culture is the creation of meaning; it is something everyone does but in different ways.

Eriksen and the Dualities of Globalization
- Thomas Hylland Eriksen discusses how globalization creates dualities in his book, Globalization: the Key Concepts.
- He argues that if you have disembedding, you must also have re-embedding.
- Globalization creates these dualities both empirically and ideationally.
- Other dualities include:
o Homogeneity/ Heterogeneity: New forms of diversity emerge from the processes of globalization.
o Shrinking/ Expanding World
o Centrifugal/ Centripetal
o Standardization/ Fragmentation
o Cosmopolitanism/ Fundamentalism
- These dualities all boil down to Sameness/ Difference.
- Globalization erases some differences while promoted the emergence of others.

Multiculturalism, A Case in Point
- Politicized multiculturalism creates homogeneity, creates new realities and silences other differences.
- The debate over the veil:
o Debates over the veil in Western Europe are very informative. Some argue that the veil complicates communication while other support it is a religious/ cultural practice. Questions have been raised about whether students should be allowed to wear the veil, especially the full veil, in school. This has led to other questions such as: What does the veil represent? Is the veil a religious or a cultural symbol? Does the veil represent gender oppression?
o The Swedish debate was sparked when two female students wore a full veil to school. The principal of the school contacted the Swedish government to ask whether the veil was permitted in school. The Swedish government, in turn, contacted religious scholars and academics. However, no one asked the two girls why they were wearing the veil. People just assumed that they were either wearing the veil for religious or cultural reasons. Ironically, the girls made themselves more visible by covering themselves up.
- Circumcized Immigrants:
o A group of female immigrants from Eritrea arrived in Sweden. These women were circumcized but didn’t feel that there was something wrong with female circumcision. It was not until people in Sweden pointed out the barbaric and cruel nature of circumcision that these women became traumatized by the experience.
- Islamization in Malaysia
o Ethnic Malays in Malaysia began emphasizing their Muslim identity in the 1970s due, in part, to forces of postcolonialism, modernity and globalization. But, over time, the Islamic movement has become more fragmented. Some Malay Muslims are influenced by Middle Eastern Islam while other are influenced by American Islam still other have taken a feminist approach. While conducting her fieldwork in Malaysia, Frisk interviewed women who had made the Haj to Mecca. One women told her that, as a result of her experience, she felt that Arab Muslims were different or backward. While in Mecca, the woman realized that Malay Muslims were actually different from Arab Muslims.

The Gay Archipelago, Boellstorff
- Boellstorff studied the emergence of the “Gay” and “Lesbi” subjectivity in Indonesia.
o Important note: There is an on-going debate in the social sciences about how subjectivity is created. Some argue that it is derived structurally while others emphasize agency or choice.
o Subjectivity: How the subject understands himself/herself.
- The subject positions of gay and lesbi are new in Indonesia even though same sex relationships have always been practiced.
- The Waria is an example of a traditional subjectivity.
o The Waria are usually male transvestites who believe that they were born with the souls of women.
o Waria dress as women most of the time and prefer to have sex with heterosexual men.
o Waria are well known and accepted in Indonesian society.
- The Gay/ Lesbi subject position is an example of the interconnectedness of disembedding and re-embedding.
o This subject position is relatively new, emerging in the 1970s.
o Some Gay/ Lesbi marry heterosexually but have extramarital homosexual relationships.
o Those who adopt this subject position as different from the Waria but they are also different from the western Gay/ Lesbi subjectivity that inspired the creation of this subject position.
o Indonesian Gays/Lesbis see themselves as related to western Gays/ Lesbis but they also see themselves as different.
o The Gay/Lesbi subject position is national. It is unthinkable to identify as a Javanese gay man but it is possible to identify as an Indonesian gay man.
o This new subjectivity is linked to the transnational, imagined community.

Cultural Dubbing
- Boellstorff discusses this emerging subjectivity in terms of cultural dubbing.
- Foreign Films and television shows were once widely dubbed in Indonesia.
- This became problematic in the late 1990s because, as opponents claimed, it distracted from the project of creating a national Indonesian identity. It was confusing to see foreigners speaking Indonesian. Thus dubbing altered the Indonesian identity.
- In terms of the Gay/ Lesbi subjectivity, some argue that those who adopt this subjectivity are merely dubbing their cultural experience with the western homosexual identity.
- However, the dub and the actual, cultural experience never really match thus, agency emerges.
o Gay/Lesbi Indonesians are actually creating a new subjectivity that is neither western nor traditional.
o This is different from glocalization because they are not simply mix two distinct identities; they are creating something new.