CULTURAL IDENTITIES: ROOTS OR ROUTES

2010

The article is focused on the issue of human being and human identity (both collective and individual one). Two methodilogical approaches – essential and existential – are considered to be so called traditional approaches of the philosophical antropology. An interpretative/narrative approach are the current state in the analysing of the identity issue. The mentioned approaches are used in the special sciences: social and cultural anthropology, psychology, etc., as well. The author emphasizes a cultural dimension of identity reflecting the human situation in globalized, multicultural world (e.g. the conceptions of multiple identity, sliced identity, split identity).

in V. Cicolani, G. Florea (edd.), Autoreprésentations et représentations culturelles en Europe : symbolisme et expression de l’idéologie dans les sociétés de l’âge du Fer de l’Europe tempérée, Pessac, Ausonius Éditions, collection NEMESIS 2, 2024, 9-16, [en ligne] https://una-editions.fr/a-focus-..., 2024

Now more than ever, the term and the notion of identity are central to historical research. However, their use, which is widely accepted, is not without problems: as cultural anthropology studies have clearly shown, the word often proves to be ineffective in terms of the development of research and therefore of historical interpretation. In the brief notes that follow, I will take stock of the situation, retracing the major problems posed by the identitarian logic and attempting to assign identity itself the correct position and function with regard to historical investigations, taking account of its original values and meanings.

LIMES: Cultural Regionalistics, 2008

The author affirms that the phenomena of history are always interpreted in the perspective of our future objectives. So, it is stated that the interpretation of nation's history is the recollection of our future. Projection of the future grants us both creative dynamism (picturesqueness), and possibility of death (existential departure). According to another thesis, creating and existence form two planes of human reality, which create a living environment interacting between each other. The author affirms that this environment is the background of becoming of both individual and the nation, and it changes together with the phenomena emerging in it. According to the third thesis, existential participant's space and time of existential participant ‐ individual or nation ‐ interact as his spiritual environment's components of his becoming. The author follows individual's and nation's analogy, which means rather interaction when creating a living environment than sim...

SOCIOLÓGIA A SPOLOČNOSŤ / SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIETY, 2020

Identity has become one of the unifying subjects of social sciences since the 1990's. It does not seem be losing popularity. Everyone has something to say: from anthropologists, geographers, historians, philosophers, politicians, psychologists and sociologists to those spending effort to restructuring postmodern interest and gendered social traditions and to understanding the reviving of ethnic politics again, this interest is quite high. Identity is about everything from political defection to credit card theft. "It is a familiar tool in the sociological tool box. " Identity has entered the area of interest of sociology with modernity and has become one the main subjects' sociology is interested in with post-modernity. The subject of this study is to determine how the meaning of identity changes in line with the historical contexts of societies and the collective commitments which individuals are a part of. Identity transforms according to historical and social conditions and involves unique characteristics in each period. We are aiming at presenting the primary characteristics of identity from traditional society to post-modern society in general terms and comparing these. In fact, this is a comparative study. Actually, while the subject of identity is almost never a part of solution of classic sociology related to traditional societies and identity's transformation from modern society to post-modern society is discussed today, it has become a necessity to look back and consider how identity was in traditional societies. Identity is recreated and produced in the phases it goes through from traditional society to postmodern society. Today, the background of the concept of identity and the construction processes of identities are firstly based on culture. While identities are determined in | 58 | SOCIOLÓGIA A SPOLOČNOSŤ 5 / 1 (2020) Sevda Mutlu traditional societies as being extra personal and society centered and almost never change, they are based on social structures which transcend locality in parallel to intellectual and social structures in modern societies. In the postmodern condition, the temporariness of identity is striking as well besides its extreme fragmentation and diversity.

Third International Cross-Cultural Communication Conference (“Cultural Identity and Diversity as Assets to Global Understanding”), 2019

There is a painting by the Renaissance master Pieter Bruegel (who became known as “The Old Man”) whose original name is “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”, which Homi Bhabha (Rato, 2015) observes that should make us think. In the picture a small detail shows us Icarus, son of Daedalus, fallen from the sky to drown solitarily in the sea, after he tried to fly too high and burned the wings for having been near the sun, and no one noticing his drama. The picture is supposed to be from the dreadful perspective of Daedalus, watching impotently from above the misfortune of his own son. This leads to a question by Bhabha: “After all, who is the moral witness of human suffering, today?” According to the scholar, this is one of the questions that Culture can make the world. A self-reflexive question, as the role of witness is one of the places of Culture. Another question is to think if Culture is not the peripheral and secondary detail that makes us reconsider the whole system, just like the legs of Icarus, when we finally look at them, at Pieter Bruegel’s picture. The concept of “Culture” has several meanings, continuing to be problematized and reformulated constantly, making the word complex and impossible to be fixed in an unique way. The same happens with ‘identity’, that is a concept that must be declined in the plural. In the current paradigm crisis, the identity plan integrates a broader process of change that has shaken the frames of reference that previously seemed to give individuals some stability. Stuart Hall notes that identity theories have shattered, and identities are in the process of disintegration as a result of cultural homogenization and ‘postmodern-global’ logic stemming from the globalization process. Thus, to talk about the existence of an eventual centrality of culture, it is necessary to leave behind the idea of absolute truth (Hall, 1997). Identity and difference are thus faces of the same coin (Martins, 2007), and memory must be preserved in a balanced way, in order to avoid amnesia and indifference from becoming dangerous ingredients of any barbarism, and so that resentment does not occupy the place of humanity. As Claude Dubar (2011) points out, the crisis is not only due to the passage from one economic cycle to another, but it has to do with the new ways of living together in the world, which highlight preconceived ideas about another, about himself and about the world itself. It is the acceptance of the ‘other’ which, moreover, there is, to determine the beginning of an ethical dimension, as stated Umberto Eco (1998). Or it shall be understood by an ‘other’ ubiquitous, in the design of Dominique Wolton (2003), who is no longer abstract or distant, but does not mean that it is more familiar or understandable. It is therefore an ‘other’ that will be understood as a sociological reality, integrating all elements resulting from cultural diversity, but also those that establish links, at the societies scale. With this communication, we propose a reflection on the relationship between identity and culture, observing how cultural identities are located in a globalized world.

2015

When studying the complex issue of identity, it is necessary to decompose it into individual parts or contexts that reveal partial identities. Since they are connected to each other, a particular change in a certain identity may induce further changes in others, or even all of them. Together they create a configuration of complex Identity that is unique, original and variable in time and space. Identity is a system that can be managed. Human being can be converted into an instrument of satisfying needs, a consumer of products. People are open to what is considered and labelled as legitimate in the social world. The social world is primary; it is a cultural text, in which the processes of defining and selfdefining are ongoing. It is therefore essential to view a person or society as a holder of multiple identities.

peterlang, 2019

The social memory that reproduces itself through daily life practices is based on the knowledge and experiences of individuals about the past. Although social memory is nurtured by individual memories, it is clear that not all individual memories can be found in social memory. Because the recollections of the past are historical events to explain today. In this regard, recalling the past is as important as how the past is remembered. There is a mutual relationship between social memory and individual memory. In this context, individual memory affects social memory and also individual memory is affected by social memory. The individual is nourished from the social memory through the process of socialization and grasps the meaning of the world of culture and values of the society in which s/he was born. The coming up of the events in the social memory in daily life affects the individual memory and is transferred to the future through individuals. This individual interaction with social memory allows individuals in everyday life to reconstruct social memory. In brief, it can be said that individuals rebuild social memory by bringing the events that took place in the social memory into the agenda in their daily lives. Daily life refers to an area in which social memory is both reproduced and transmitted. It can be said that cultural memory is a formation as a result of the transfer of a certain life style, custom, tradition and the behaviors which have been continued for centuries from the past to the present. In this study, the relationship between social memory and cultural identity is examined. What is the relationship between social memory and cultural identity? How does the culture and society we grow up contribute to the shaping of individual-collective memory and identity? Answers of such questions are sought in the study.

For the emergence of a community or a nation, it has always been necessary to bring local identities and different ethnic groups around one common cultural center. However, the process of integrating individuals into a dominant ethnicity or cultural centercertainly causes several social, cultural and political problems. During theprogress of communication systems from the newspapers to the television and the social media, the issue has gained momentum with the expression of reactions to the ethnical cultures which were formed centrally. It is interestingthat social studies highlights identity studies which focuses on diverse issues ranging from the question of how administrative authoritiescan manage counterweights other than the center to the question of what is the legitimacy of giving privileges to the members of minority groups. This situation arises as a natural result of social, cultural and political centralization, and from the increasing concern in social sciences about gathering data as it needs to give an immediate answer to the question of how to restructure the social positions and the roles of minority groups which realize that they are different from the center. This study focuses on the historical and social origins of the growing popularity of identity studies in social sciences. In this regard, the development and the growing popularity of identity studies and the types of data it provides community and their problems are examined in this study. Bu makale iThenticate sistemi tarafından taranmıştır.

Trying to describe identities, both national and individual, appears to be a naïve task, being more plausible the notion of heterogeneous cultural space instead of national identity, and the notion of individual imaginary instead of individual identity, understood as a flexible posture that is built through identification with diverse languages and lifestyles, as we build our history, heritage, and our processes of cultural transference. Both heterogeneous cultural space and individual imaginary are constructed not only from the immediate influences provided by the media, but also through the way we articulate the local and our relationship with the rest of the world. There is a dissociation between the public and private versions of identity, but it does not mean they constitute completely independent worlds. Public versions of identity are constructed by selecting characteristics from ordinary people’s ways of life, which inevitably influence the way we perceive ourselves. Because it is not an automatic or mechanical process, there are groups that do not feel represented by the dominant versions, without sharing that sense of identity. Therefore, public versions of identity are somewhat exclusive. This conflict generates critical readings, in which individuals, in the construction of their individual identity, reject, criticize, or actively reinterpret dominant discourses. Within this context, globalization has made the process of identity construction more complex. The simultaneity of information, so vast and accessible, hinders the individual’s ability to understand what is happening. It is difficult to form a unitary image of oneself, both individually and collectively.