Authors in search of a character : personhood, agency and identity in the Mediterranean

Abstract

This paper utilizes Pirandello’s play ‘Six characters in search of an author’ as a metaphor to examine the anthropology of the Mediterranean. It suggests that the anthropology of the Mediterranean can be looked at in terms of two interrelated processes: how anthropologists as authors have tended to construct their texts and search for ‘characters’ to characterise the region, and how the people of the Mediterranean go about constructing their identities as authors of their own characters. For the first, the political economy of the shifting category of the ‘ Mediterranean ’ is examined in light of recent criticisms of a ‘ Mediterranean anthropology ’. The paper then takes one theme, often highlighted as typical of the Mediterranean region, that of honour, and examines it by reference to the construction of personhood and identity and the tensions that it creates. It suggests that the anthropology of the Mediterranean could benefit by constructing its problematics by reference to the central issues raised by Mauss and Simmel about the nature of exchange in society and its relationship to concepts of the person.