Intercultural Encounters as an Anthropological Object?
When discussing cultural encounters, the term “intercultural” is more than relevant. Yet, despite the abundance of literature related to intercultural experiences, anthropology has been peculiarly silent on interculturality as a concept. Paradoxically, (inter)cultural encounters are at the core of anthropological thought. They are omnipresent, but expressed in other terms. In this article, I apply Gananath Obeyesekere’s myth-model theory to the cases of Western expatriates in India, thus using anthropological tools in order to add another dimension to theories of cultural encounters. By studying the various ways Western expatriates transform and reappropriate the myths of the renunciant, the philanthropist and the hippy, myth-model theory allows me to hold cultural encounters as an object of anthropological scrutiny while preserving the thickness of the field. This approach goes beyond step-by-step simplistic theories, since it highlights the contexts and complexities of cultural encounters by taking into account what precedes and surrounds them – both in an imaginary and historical axis.