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| Title: | The Question of Cultural Difference: Anthropological Perspectives in South Africa |
| Author: | Sharp, John S. |
| Year: | 2001 |
| Periodical: | South African Journal of Ethnology |
| Volume: | 24 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 67-74 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | culture apartheid plural society anthropology Anthropology and Archaeology Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Ethnic and Race Relations |
| Abstract: | Anthropology in South Africa has had a vexed relationship with the question of cultural difference. Cultural difference has been the discipline's 'raison d'être', yet it has become clear that power relationships are deeply implicated in the supposedly ineluctable facts of cultural difference. This paper examines some aspects of anthropology's involvement in the construction of cultural difference in South Africa, drawing on M. Mamdani's argument (1996) that apartheid and segregation were elaborations of the basic tenets of the colonial system of indirect rule - a form of rule based on the division of society along lines of ostensible cultural difference. Anthropological critiques of the construction of cultural difference under apartheid served to raise the equally problematic question of cultural 'sameness'. 'Sameness' is also a presumption of power, as current opposition by indigenous minorities to the indignities of forced assimilation in a wide array of States makes clear. South Africa's challenge is to deal with the twin legacies of rule by cultural difference and rule by the denigration of indigenous culture and forced assimilation. Bibliogr., sum. in English and Afrikaans. |