Search

In this article the author discusses the role of democracy in the post-global context. By “post-global” he intends that the grands récits (systems of thought and ideologies) which according to Lyotard were doomed to disappear in the post-modern era are still present and active but that they are not obvious anymore: they work underground within the processes of economic, social, political production. The author proceeds by examining the three principles on which societies order themselves: the sharing and establishment of blood ties – or time ties –, the sharing and establishment of space ties – or territorial ties – and, finally, the sharing of common action such as planning actions for the future. The author argues that democracy is the only form of political organization which is able to guarantee the possibility to these three principles of ordering the world to co-exist in such a way that none of the three principles can survive or prosper at the expense of the other two. But today this balance is threatened by a new element which sprouts from the third principle – the sharing of common action – in this case, the order of the market: a new transnational order which is also juridical, the order produced by the relations between economic actors becomes juridical. The State, intended here as expression of the territorial principle of organization of a society, is contractually week in this new context which the author calls the post-global context, and transnational holdings easily colonize the Lebenswelt. According to the author, it is not possible to practice democracy, to have strength as territorial unit, without the public and visible discussion of other ties, which are not territorial. The practice of assembly dialogue is therefore essential. He further states that democracy is a tension and not a guaranteed condition or state that one can keep to oneself.

Can we speak of a Berlin School of Anthropology? During the XXth century the Institut für Ethnologie of the Freien Universität had an intense research activity and a significant plurality of theoretical approaches. Particularly, at the end of the 70’s a wide group of researchers gathered in Berlin around the IfE. These scholars not only focused their attention on specific geographical areas (above all Northeast Africa and Central Asia) but also developed common themes which led to the debate on the methodology and epistemology of Anthropology. Research activities catalysed around charismatic figures of German and European Anthropology and this led to the promotion of the idea of long-term fieldwork and to a particular attention to the critical definition of the qualities of ethnological knowledge. With the development and the application of the notion of imaginäre Ethnografie and with the theorization of the modified states of consciousness, the relationship between der Wissenschaftler und das Irrationale – to recall the title of a book published during those years – could finally be reconsidered in a continuous dialogue with researchers such as Hans Peter Duerr and Paul Feyerabend. This is how what I would like to define as “the Berlin stream of Anthropology” was born; and many scholars who later left the IfE for the wide world may or may not recognize themselves in it.