Yeah, like Tim said...
I will add my postmodern twist, however. The moment we classify
people into OUR boxes (Euro-American, African American, Native
American, whatever), we are constrained to see these ethnicities, and
not the processes and negotiations which comprise, in my view,
ethnicity. I wonder, for instance, if the "Georgian mind-set" ( and
Tim, how COULD you leave out Deetz???) is somehow "Euro-American"
with no need to contextualize it with reference to Africa, slavery,
classed societies based on colonialism, etc. In many, many parts of
the world, a person's bedsheet and his/her garment are one and the
same (e.i, Indian lungis, Indonesion sarongs, etc...). The
distinction between clothing and bed-clothing may be part of the
"Georgian" parsing of the world! But when we begin with categories
pre-determined by present concerns, we will, of necessity, find those
categories in the past and we will, I am afraid, perpetuate them
into the future.
Dan
|