Subversive Archaism : Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage / Michael Herzfeld.

Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix;
Foreword / Robert J. Foster and Daniel R. Reichman xiii;
1. The Nation-State Outraged 1;
2. National Legitimacy and the Illegitimacy of National Origins 27;
3. Belonging and Remoteness 51;
4. Cosmologies of the Social 69;
5. A Plurality of Polities 97;
6. Subversive Comparisons 121;
7. Civility, Parody, and Invective 137

"In Subversive Archaism, Michael Herzfeld explores the challenge that "subversive archaism"-the ideology and practice of using state discourses of heritage and tradition against state authority-poses to governments both authoritarian and democratic. Building on the legacy of violence underlying all national independence movements, subversive archaists emphasize details of national history that reflect their own local values-rather than Eurocentric bureaucratic perspectives-to claim legitimacy for their defiance of official authority. The core of the book, while drawing on a wide range of examples, particularly concerns the actions and eventual fate of two communities: one, a supposedly remote mountain village in Greece traditionally notorious for endemic animal-theft and now accused of being a center of illegal drug cultivation and distribution, the other a small urban enclave in Thailand that became a cause célèbre as its leaders tried for a quarter-century to resist eviction as squatters. In contrasted but also complementary ways, these two communities illustrate the strengths and vulnerabilities of subversive archaism as a political stance and strategy amid today's globalizing dynamics"-- Provided by publisher.