Between Silences and Culture: A Partisan Anthropology

Two thumbnail-size sketches of the recently changing situation in rural regions of Newfoundland and North Carolina will serve to introduce a widespread and characteristic situation of villagers in the context of what is loosely called “globalized” capital. The conceptual tools of anthropology seem inadequate to the task of grasping these situations. The inadequacy of theory significantly constrains the strategies that can be developed for contesting new and intensified inequalities. At the core of this problem of theory and strategy are the social processes that produce and that politicize silences. Rural Newfoundland is almost entirely composed of small, coastal fishing villages,