Journey's end. A Comparative Study of Intercultural Encounters and 'Cultural Exhaustion' of Western Expatriates in India

The expatriation of Westerners in India is a sociocultural phenomenon, and I shall first highlight a few characteristics of modernity in the West - the feeling of alienation, the subjective turn, globalisation as well as the most significant mythical models of India - to understand which conditions provide the impulse to expatriation projects.;Following these, a comparative chapter focuses on convergence among the three types of expatriation : local insertion within specific communities highly associated with significant myth models of India; self-renewal deriving from cultural encounters; and lastly, impact of transnationalism on the reinforcement of the malaise of modernity experienced by those I interviewed.;The theoretical argument presents the general answers that expatriates find to alleviate their malaise of modernity : 1) a deep commitment to a lifestyle that allows them to find fulfilment according to their own aspirations; 2) gathering with people sharing the same interests and commitment to a clearly defined social role; and 3) liberation from social pressure and integration of transnational practices allowing them to protect affective ties while adopting a convenient outsider status.;The study also reveals that we cannot set aside the history of Western encounters with India if we want to understand specific encounters of Westerners with local Indians. While Western socioeconomic privileges in India are clearly described as a basic condition for expatriation, I nevertheless conclude that expatriation is mainly motivated by a feeling of cultural exhaustion with Western lifestyles. Analysis of critical standpoints on modernity (reinforced by cultural encounters) finally leads me to formulate some avenues that need to be explored to develop an anthropology of the West, meanwhile implicitly calling into question the anthropological project.;An experiential approach will then enable me to understand how expatriation is lived by the actors concerned. Ethnographic data collected in India in three different borderzones give me access to these experiences. Accounts were collected : 1) in Rishikesh with spiritual expatriates; 2) in Calcutta with humanitarian expatriates; and 3) in Goa with hedonistic-expressive expatriates seeking a new lifestyle. These accounts are presented in three different chapters.;Keywords Anthropology, ethnology, India, modernity, otherness, spirituality, humanitarianism, hedonistic lifestyle, communities, transnationalism.