Ethnicity, Inc.

自冷战结束以来，身份政治在全球范围内的复苏表现为大量的暴力。但它也有另一面：少数民族群体的行为越来越像公司，并将他们的文化推向市场，这两个过程都深深地刻在法律中。该项目的目标是调查各族裔群体在何种条件下通过以下方式寻求增强能力：将自己融入社会，为经济目的利用其主权法律的地位，以及将其文化习俗、知识、设计、表演作为知识产权授予版权。Inc.“，在美国，亚洲，欧洲和非洲，并进行了两个深入的，示范性的案例研究，在南非，这一现象正在迅速增长。所使用的方法联合收割机对世界各地选定案例的详细档案分析（使用大部分未发表的材料）和人种学实地调查（基于参与者观察和广泛的访谈）。这个项目试图回答的主要问题是：在什么条件下，少数民族群体合法地合并并成为企业？他们是通过什么手段和机制，法律的和其他手段和机制来这样做的？在诉诸族裔商业与存在或不存在族裔暴力之间是否有任何明显的关系？文化产品和文化习俗的商品化对文化人的生活有什么影响？自己的？对他们行使权力，以及更广泛地说，对族裔群体的成员资格？简而言之，谁受益，谁受损？这项研究的预期重要性在于，它努力促进建立一个跨学科领域，致力于对文化和特性的政治经济学的新发展进行批判性研究。

Since the end of the Cold War, the global resurgence of identity politics has expressed itself in a great deal of violence. But it has also had another side: a tendency for ethnic groups to behave ever more like corporations and to market their cultures, both processes being deeply inscribed in the law. The objective of this project is to investigate the conditions under which ethnic groupings seek empowerment by incorporating themselves, by deploying their sovereign legal status for economic ends, and by copyrighting their cultural practices, knowledge, designs, performances as intellectual property.In order to achieve this objective, the project undertakes a broad, comparative documentary study of manifestations of the phenomenon, glossed as "Ethnicity, Inc.", in the USA, Asia, Europe, and Africa, and conducts two in-depth, exemplary case studies in South Africa, where the phenomenon is growing very rapidly. The methods used combine detailed archival analysis of selected cases from across the world (using largely unpublished materials) with ethnographic fieldwork (based on participant-observation and extensive interviewing). The primary questions this project seeks to answer: Under what conditions do ethnic groups legally incorporate themselves and become businesses? By what means and mechanisms, legal and other, do they go about doing so? Is there any discernable relationship between resort to ethnic business and the presence or absence of ethnic violence? What is the effect of the commodification of cultural products and practices on the lives of those who ?own? them, on the exercise of authority over them, and, more generally, on ethnic group membership? In short, who benefits, who loses? The projected importance of the study lies in its effort to contribute to the establishment of an interdisciplinary field dedicated to the critical study of new developments in the political economy of culture and identity.