http://www.wac.uct.ac.za/croatia/olsen.htm
"Notion such as globalization and cultural hybridity have become the key buzz words in much current debate in the social and human sciences. Their prominent position reflects the significant transformations which have occured in the globalªlocal interface in late 20th century. Cultural and national borders have become increasingly blurred as jet transport, satellite communication and electronic information technology makes the world "shrink". The flows of peoples, information, cultures, commodities and capital bring about a more immediate and direct articulation of local and global spaces, and a disruption of place as a self-evident reference for cultural distinctiveness and belonging (Giddens 1990, Eriksen 1994, Bhabha 1994, Waters 1995, Morley and Robins 1995).
Simultaneously and inter-linked we witness how the firm foundations of modernity are being challenged by the "ambiguity, uncertainty and depthlessness" of post-modernism. A challenge which has become fashionable to associate with the end of certain taken-for-granted fundamentals: the end of grand narratives, the nation state, authenticity and even of history itself (Fukuyama 1992). The enlightened visions of Kant, Hegel and Marx of a universal reason and purpose in history - the realisation of human freedom, the achivement of which was the goal towards which progess ran, have lost their credibility. The new uncertainty, ambiguity and inconsistency mark the end of modern life as a life-towards-a-project (Bauman 1997:48, Morley and Robins 1995:203).
The purpose of the present paper is to discuss these changing conditions - and the reactions they have provoced - in relation to the socio-political role of archaeological knowledge. Born and raised in the comfort of western modernity, archaeology has been selfconfident in the belief in order, continuity, and in conceiving the past as fundamental for collective identities in the present. In what way do these new processes of dislocation, of hybridity and displacement, affect the social and political agenda of archaeology, of museums, and of present uses and consumptions of the past in general? Are the old slogans about indentity and roots, to give nations, ethnic groups and minorities "a history", still an acceptable legitimation of the archaeological enterprise? Or is there a widening gap between this indentity project, which in many ways is an offspring of nationalism, and the new forms of social reality, identity and belonging which presently are being forged out of the global-local nexus? . . ."
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