Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State

Abstract

In Cultural Intimacy, anthropologist Michael Herzfeld asks why officials treat certain features of national culture as disreputable, and why at the same time it is these features through which the nation-state often secures the loyalty of its citizens. To probe this "cultural intimacy" he develops an approach, which he calls "social poetics" that opens up the tensions between official models of national culture and the lived experience of ordinary citizens