Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Identities

This collection of extended papers examines the ways in which relations between national, ethnic, religious and gender groups are underpinned by each group's perceptions of their distinctive identities and of the nature of the boundaries which divide them. Questions of frontier and identity are theorised with reference to the Maori, Australian aborigines and Celtic groups. The theoretical arguments and ethnographic perspectives of this book place it at the cutting edge of contemporary anthropological scholarship on identity, with respect to the study of ethnicity, nationalism, localism, gender and indigenous peoples. It will be of value to scholars and students of social and cultural anthropology, human geography and social psychology.

Anthony Cohen is Professor of Social Anthropology, and Provost of Law and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.