Discussion Section: Anthropology and Political Movements

ABSTRACT(Vol. 11, No. 2, 2001 Journal of Mediterranean Studies):

This paper disputes the tendency in recent political anthropology (inspired by the work of Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson) to use different paradigms in the study of class and in the study of nationalism or ethnicity. Broadly, this tendency associates class movements with economic categories driven by material interests, and nationalist movements with ‘culture’ and the passions. In order to re-unify the two paradigms, the paper explores two cases in Southern Europe where ‘cultural’ concerns and actions were essential to the political definition and development of labouring classes. These cases are the movements of revolutionary class action in the early 20th century Sesto San Giovanni near Milan, and in the estate system of Andalusia, where landless labourers formed the backbone of Anarchism. Distinguishing between political movement and political discourse, the paper shows how political movement required the development of a political infrastructure which linked radically different kinds of worker. In consequence, both cases show the emphasis on territory in the development of ‘communities of resistance’. The discourse of both movements reveals how economic processes and conflicts were translated by activists into a moral drama. Discourses were fundamentally ‘cultural’—involving contestations around different forms of knowledge and understandings of power, morality and the person. Collective ‘class’ identities were constructed across a range of kinds of space—the workplace, the town, and the ‘imagined community’ of workers at national and international levels. Importantly, ‘cultural’ understandings of the two movements as transformative ethical and political projects were essential to their continuance. Once their linguistic codes and political traditions were lost, both movements retreated into an economistic discourse about wage levels, without any corresponding political identity. Thus, movements with an economic basis in different parts of the Mediterranean had a common ‘political culture’. Collective ‘class’ identities have to be seen as intrinsically moral narratives which constitute collectivities in terms of social difference, historical sequence, and political transformation.