Cross-cultured Malta

German ethnographer Gerold Gerber visited Malta a number of times to collect data with a view to study the Maltese identity question. He has a particular interest in Malta's Arab heritage, the shipyards culture and political intervention on the island. In association with the European University Institute in Florence and the University of Konstanz in Germany, he presented the results of his studies at the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Conference in Copenhagen, 14-17 August 2002. From Gerold Gerber's paper:

All people are increasingly stuck between inside and outside. I therefore propose Malta as an attractive case for our reflections on hybrid identities and methodology. Yet, to look at the Maltese as ‘halfies’ is not self-evident, at least not for Europeans. According to the official Maltese policy vis-à-vis the European Union, to what the Maltese tell the tourists who visit their islands, and to what we learn from the scientific literature written by Western scholars, the Maltese are “100 percent Europeans”, not hybrid and ambivalent. “That we are European is now a fact of life”, writes, for instance, Godfrey A. Pirotta (1994:111).

The word ‘now’, of course, is an indication that this has not always been the case. To defend the suggestion that the Maltese exist ‘betwixt and between’ various categories and identities (V. Turner 1967), in particular between Europe and the Arab world, we have to go into the story of my somewhat unusual encounter with Maltese society via Malta Drydocks...

The biggest surprise, however, came when I realised that, despite of all that, Malta’s Arab and Islamic heritage, and what the Maltese make of it, has never been a topic of social research. The dominant view among intellectuals, both in Malta and abroad, suggests purity and coherence, not ambivalence and hybridity. Consequently, to raise the Arab question at all has to be seen as an exception in the literature.[10] The fact that I studied Maltese society in the “Three Cities” - the name simply being the translation of Tripoli into English by the way -, and not in Sliema, Valletta, or at the university in Msida, made me aware that the Arab heritage plays a role in Malta. Yet, I wasn’t sure what kind of role.


'Interviews as cross-cultural encounters in Malta' - Read the full paper by Gerold Gerber here (with bibliography and notes)

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