The Illusion of Cultural Identity

The Illusion of Cultural Identity
Author: Jean-François Bayart
Publisher: Hurst & Company
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2005
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Bayart provides an examination of the fluidity of ideas of culture with relation to identity, state-building and political action.

Identity and Violence

Identity and Violence
Author: Amartya Sen
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2007
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780141027807

Amartya Sen argues that most of the conflicts in the contemporary world arise from individuals' notions of who they are, and which groups they belong to - local, national, religious - which define themselves in opposition to others.

The End of Illusions

The End of Illusions
Author: Andreas Reckwitz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2021-06-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1509545719

We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.

There Is No Such Thing as Cultural Identity

There Is No Such Thing as Cultural Identity
Author: François Jullien
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2021-05-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1509547037

As people throughout the world react to globalization and revert to nationalism, they are proclaiming distinct cultural identities for themselves. Cultural identity seems to offer a defensive wall against the homogenizing effects of globalization and a framework for nurturing and protecting cultural differences. In this short and provocative book, François Jullien argues that this emphasis on cultural identity is a mistake. Cultures exist in relation to one another and they are constantly mutating and transforming themselves. There is no cultural identity, there are only what Jullien calls ‘resources’. Resources are created in a certain space, they are available to all and belong to no one. They are not exclusive, like the values to which we proclaim loyalty; instead, we deploy them or not, activate them or let them fall by the wayside, and each of us as individuals is responsible for these choices. This conceptual shift requires us to redefine three key terms – the universal, the uniform and the common. Equipped with these concepts, we can rethink the dialogue between cultures in a way that avoids what Jullien sees as the false debate about identity and difference. This powerful critique of the modern shibboleth of cultural identity will appeal to anyone interested in the great social and political questions of our time.

Dialogues in the Diasporas

Dialogues in the Diasporas
Author: Nikos Papastergiadis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN:

The author stages a series of conversations with prominent writers and artists to assess how to define cultural identity in the modern world and age of mass media and global migration. His premise is that conventional cultural identity is not static.

Culture, Power, Place

Culture, Power, Place
Author: Akhil Gupta
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1997-07-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822382083

Anthropology has traditionally relied on a spatially localized society or culture as its object of study. The essays in Culture, Power, Place demonstrate how in recent years this anthropological convention and its attendant assumptions about identity and cultural difference have undergone a series of important challenges. In light of increasing mass migration and the transnational cultural flows of a late capitalist, postcolonial world, the contributors to this volume examine shifts in anthropological thought regarding issues of identity, place, power, and resistance. This collection of both new and well-known essays begins by critically exploring the concepts of locality and community; first, as they have had an impact on contemporary global understandings of displacement and mobility, and, second, as they have had a part in defining identity and subjectivity itself. With sites of discussion ranging from a democratic Spain to a Puerto Rican barrio in North Philadelphia, from Burundian Hutu refugees in Tanzania to Asian landscapes in rural California, from the silk factories of Hangzhou to the long-sought-after home of the Palestinians, these essays examine the interplay between changing schemes of categorization and the discourses of difference on which these concepts are based. The effect of the placeless mass media on our understanding of place—and the forces that make certain identities viable in the world and others not—are also discussed, as are the intertwining of place-making, identity, and resistance as they interact with the meaning and consumption of signs. Finally, this volume offers a self-reflective look at the social and political location of anthropologists in relation to the questions of culture, power, and place—the effect of their participation in what was once seen as their descriptions of these constructions. Contesting the classical idea of culture as the shared, the agreed upon, and the orderly, Culture, Power, Place is an important intervention in the disciplines of anthropology and cultural studies. Contributors. George E. Bisharat, John Borneman, Rosemary J. Coombe, Mary M. Crain, James Ferguson, Akhil Gupta, Kristin Koptiuch, Karen Leonard, Richard Maddox, Lisa H. Malkki, John Durham Peters, Lisa Rofel

The Last Illusion

The Last Illusion
Author: Porochista Khakpour
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2014-05-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1620403048

A kaleidoscopic tale inspired by a legend from the medieval Persian epic "Book of Kings" follows the coming-of-age of a feral Middle Eastern youth in New York City on the eve of the September 11 attacks. By the award-winning author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects. 25,000 first printing.