ABSTRACT We introduce this special issue, which re-examines the fluctuating fortunes of the Mediterranean in anthropology and ask what it offers for contemporary anthropological explorations. We locate the Mediterranean within the history of anthropological (and more broadly, ethnographic) development of core ideas and methodologies concerning personhood, narrative, and culture making. Our approach to the study of the Mediterranean focuses less on why anthropologists abandoned a notion of regional cultural unity, and more on the bases through which such unity is performed and on the concepts and categories which anthropologists might recuperate to account for such performances, even in the wake of their rejection of ‘cultural areas’ as such. Such an analytical move requires the remapping of the Mediterranean as a regional formation that is both multi-scalar and transnational. We argue that the Mediterranean must be approached alongside other attempts to critically remap space and human and ecological connections in anthropology and at is margins; that the study of the Mediterranean should converse with recent developments in the study of sea and oceanic worlds, whether from a historical anthropological or transnational/transregional perspective. At the same time, we outline the benefits of paying attention to the unique place that the Mediterranean might occupy among such maritime worlds. Such a Mediterranean projects a kaleidoscopic vision, combining not just premodern pasts and modern presents, but also a long and conflictual present perfect, in which past and present processes enliven each other, underwriting possible futures.

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简介：重新映射地中海人类学

摘要我们介绍了此期特刊，它重新审视了地中海在人类学领域中起伏不定的命运，并询问它为当代人类学探索提供了什么。我们将地中海定位在人类学（更广泛地说是人种志）发展的历史中，这些历史涉及有关人格，叙事和文化创造的核心思想和方法。我们研究地中海的方法较少关注人类学家为何放弃区域文化统一性的概念，而更多地关注进行这种统一性的基础，以及人类学家可能调养以说明此类表现的概念和类别，即使在他们拒绝了“文化区”。这种分析性行动需要将地中海重新映射为一个既有多层面又有跨国性质的区域组织。我们认为，必须与地中海一起努力，以其他方式来批判性地重新映射人类学和边缘人类之间的空间，人类与生态联系。无论是从历史人类学还是从跨国/跨地区的角度来看，对地中海的研究都应与海洋和海洋世界研究的最新发展相悖。同时，我们概述了关注地中海可能在此类海洋世界中占据的独特位置的好处。这样的地中海投射出万花筒般的视野，不仅结合了前现代的过去和现代的礼物，而且还融合了漫长而矛盾的现在的完美，