“Inadequacy” as a Perspective for Rethinking Minority Experience and Knowledge Production in Europe

Abstract (English)

This paper proposes “inadequacy” as a productive lens for rethinking anthropological categories used to understand Europe. Grounded in the lived experiences of indigenous and national minorities, this perspective challenges essentialist views and dominant frameworks, such as the East-West divide or postcolonial or post-Soviet lenses. The inadequacy perspective invites us to consider the epistemic positions of those who do not fully belong to either pole and who remain structurally and symbolically marginalized within European imaginaries.

Inadequacy can be observed in various groups of their self-perception – internalised expectations of their identity. For instance, indigenous communities frequently face imposed expectations of cultural authenticity, while Eastern Europeans are often cast as insufficiently Western. Similarly, postcolonial societies continue to grapple with developmentalist narratives that portray them as underdeveloped – an image internalized by many of their citizens.

By inadequacy we mean not only how minority subjects are perceived and perceive themselves as not “enough” Western, modern, authentic, indigenous, or national, but also the analytic limitations of categories that fail to grasp the hybridity, ambiguity, and tension central to minority experiences. This position of “not-quite-belonging” is not merely psychological, but carries social consequences: from harmful stereotypes and denial of self-determination to vulnerability to propaganda, radicalization, and ambivalence toward dominant notions of citizenship and identity.

Crucially, we suggest that this position of inadequacy is not merely a condition to be overcome, but a site of potential – a vantage point for rethinking both minority experiences and the categories through which anthropology approaches Europe. This includes a critical view of dominant knowledge production and the discursive framing of minority identities by national and scholarly institutions. We call for an anthropological imagination that treats this inadequacy not as a deficit, but as a challenge to hegemonic perspectives and a step toward non-Eurocentric approaches to studying Europe from within and its margins.