We would like to open some questions here about the institutional and cultural conditions of anything that might be called cultural studies or multiculturalism. By introducing cultural studies and multiculturalism many intellectuals aim at a more democratic culture. We share this aim. In this essay, however, we would like to argue that the projects of cultural studies and multiculturalism require: a more international model of cultural studies than the dominant Anglo-American versions; renewed attention to the (...) institutional environments of cultural studies; and a questioning of the relations between multiculturalism and identity politics. We seek less to “fix” these problems than to provide a critical analysis of the languages, the methods of criticism, and the assumptions about identity, culture, and politics that present the problems to us. Because the thickets entangling what our group calls cultural studies are so deeply rooted in Western academia, which to a large degree constitutes our own group, the counterexample of cultural criticism in other contexts can be more than usually instructive. We begin by considering the position of cultural studies in China, since our group includes a number of Chinese intellectuals, on whose experience the following section is largely based. The Chicago Cultural Studies Group began meeting in June 1990. It includes Lauren Berlant, David Bunn, Vinay Dharwadker, Norma Field, Dilip Gaonkar, Marilyn Ivy, Benjamin Lee, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Xinmin Liu, Mathew Roberts, Sharon Stephens, Katie Trumpener, Greg Urban, Michael Warner, Jianyang Zha, and Jueliang Zhou. (shrink)

"El libro tiene dos grandes temas: la identidad cultural, sobre la que se expresan opiniones balanceadas entre los extremos posibles, y la 'liberacion social', entendida en general como liberacion con respecto a estructuras opresivas. El itinerario de e.

_Dislocating Cultures_ takes aim at the related notions of nation, identity, and tradition to show how Western and Third World scholars have misrepresented Third World cultures and feminist agendas. Drawing attention to the political forces that have spawned, shaped, and perpetuated these misrepresentations since colonial times, Uma Narayan inspects the underlying problems which "culture" poses for the respect of difference and cross-cultural understanding. Questioning the problematic roles assigned to Third World subjects within multiculturalism, Narayan examines ways in which (...) the flow of information across national contexts affects our understanding of issues. _Dislocating Cultures_ contributes a philosophical perspective on areas of ongoing interest such as nationalism, post-colonial studies, and the cultural politics of debates over tradition and "westernization" in Third World contexts. (shrink)

_Dislocating Cultures_ takes aim at the related notions of nation, identity, and tradition to show how Western and Third World scholars have misrepresented Third World cultures and feminist agendas. Drawing attention to the political forces that have spawned, shaped, and perpetuated these misrepresentations since colonial times, Uma Narayan inspects the underlying problems which "culture" poses for the respect of difference and cross-cultural understanding. Questioning the problematic roles assigned to Third World subjects within multiculturalism, Narayan examines ways in which (...) the flow of information across national contexts affects our understanding of issues. _Dislocating Cultures_ contributes a philosophical perspective on areas of ongoing interest such as nationalism, post-colonial studies, and the cultural politics of debates over tradition and "westernization" in Third World contexts. (shrink)

In this book I offer a critical, comparative and empirically-informed defense of Islamic schools in the West. To do so I elaborate an idealized philosophy of Islamic education, against which I evaluate the situation in three different Western countries. I examine in detail notions of cultural coherence, the scope of parental authority v. a child's interests, as well as the state's role in regulating religious schools. Further, using Catholic schools as an analogous case, I speculate on the likely future (...) of Western Islamic schools. (shrink)

These essays explore the relationship between culture and politics in the modern world. They range in space from Iran to Algeria, and the eastern marchlands of Europe to the Atlantic, and in time over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But they are all inspired by a cluster of linked preoccupations with the nature of the social order now emerging in the world and the kinds of moral and political legitimation it requires and permits. The essays are also linked by Ernest (...) Gellner's distinctive, and highly arresting, intellectual temper and style. The volume will interest a wide range of readers in the social sciences and philosophy. (shrink)

Without glorifying any cultural standpoint I argue that the best model that accounts for the interests and aspirations of Africa cannot be that which promotes and emphasizes traditional ideas since such a model would be unnecessarily insular and prevent us from engaging the aspects of our cultures which are needed in coping with Africa’s challenges. I contend that this does not amount to an imposition of any form of metanarrative but rather to critically engage those forces that are detrimental (...) to survival and social stability. (shrink)

The present research used archaeological data, i.e., the data obtained from kamekan jar burials in the Mikuni Hills of the northern Kyushu area in the Mid- dle Yayoi period, to test the parochial altruism model. This model argued that out-group hate and in-group favor coevolved via prehistoric intergroup conflicts. If this model is accurate, such an out-group hate and in-group favor could be re- flected in the archaeological remains, such as pottery making; the more frequent intergroup conflicts are and the (...) more each group is opposed, the more independent and coherent each group will be and more evident cultural identity could be estab- lished within each group. We employed an elliptic Fourier analysis for the shapes of kamekan jar burials. We examined whether frequent intergroup conflicts in the period influenced kamekan jar pottery between subareas of the Mikuni Hills. The results suggested that the shapes of kamekan jar burials after the KIIIa type are slightly different between subareas, which is partially consistent with the model. However, the results do not support the model directly. (shrink)

Dislocating Cultures takes aim at the related notions of nation, identity, and tradition to show how Western and Third World scholars have misrepresented Third World cultures and feminist agendas.

Artificial Culture" is an examination of the articulation, construction, and representation of "the artificial" in contemporary popular cultural texts, especially science fiction films and novels. The book argues that today we live in an artificial culture due to the deep and inextricable relationship between people, our bodies, and technology at large. While the artificial is often imagined as outside of the natural order and thus also beyond the realm of humanity, paradoxically, artificial concepts are simultaneously produced and constructed by (...) human ideas and labor. The artificial can thus act as a boundary point against which we as a culture can measure what it means to be human. Science fiction feature films and novels, and other related media, frequently and provocatively deploy ideas of the artificial in ways which the lines between people, our bodies, spaces and culture more broadly blur and, at times, dissolve. Building on the rich foundational work on the figures of the cyborg and posthuman, this book situates the artificial in similar terms, but from a nevertheless distinctly different viewpoint. After examining ideas of the artificial as deployed in film, novels and other digital contexts, this study concludes that we are now part of an artificial culture entailing a matrix which, rather than separating minds and bodies, or humanity and the digital, reinforces the symbiotic connection between identities, bodies, and technologies. "--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman (1906-2007) approached the arts and other kinds of knowledge as forms of symbolism. His principal aim in philosophy was to advance understanding and remove confusions by verbal analysis and logical constructions. Goodman's philosophical theories encompass nominalism, constructivism and a version of radical relativism. In his Languages of Art, Goodman sets forth distinctions among the various art according to differences in the forms of symbols employed. He contributed as well to arts education and to philosophy of the museum. His (...) performance work, "Hockey Seen: A Nightmare in Three Periods and Sudden Death embodies his aesthetic theories. (shrink)

(1996). Values, cultural identity, and European integration: Towards a theoretical model. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 619-626.

Tekst bi trebalo da pokaze da je posebnost razlicitih kulturnih identiteta uklopiva sa opstoscu standarda - razlike mogu da budu organski ukljucene u celinu koja im omogucava smisao. Globalni smisao preobrazaja identiteta je u potrebi za slobodom kao i za realnom demokratijom, sto znaci prevazilazenje mehanizama instrumentalnog rezonovanja i uzurpacije moci. Proces kulturnog preobrazaja zahteva svesne izbore koji nam omogucavaju identitet i vrednost nasih ljudskih standarda.

As a fan of EastEnders the purpose of the author's dissertation was to examine current thinking on Gender and Cultural Identity in Northern Ireland through a literature review and some small scal/e research into the viewing of the soap opera.The author explored the issues with a group of eighteen Protestant and Catholic women. There were few significant differences in usage across age, class and cultural background. All of the women were capable of resistive readings as well as (...) deep involvement and there was a spread of opinion about some of the more controversial issues dealt with. Attitudes to identity were more complex than often seems apparent in a simplistic reference to 'Two Communities'.The clearest division carne on the issue of the feasibility of a local soap opera. Middle class women rejected this idea whilst the working class women welcomed it as an opportunity to explore contentious issues through afamiliar medium which has a particular relevance to women. (shrink)

London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pp. 203.Pb. £19.

This essay outlines one way to conceptualise the relation between cultural identity, collective memory, and artifacts. It starts by characterising the notion of cultural identity as our membership to cultural groups and briefly explores the relation between cultural and narrative identity (section 2). Next, it presents how human memory is conceptualised on an individual and collective level (section 3) and then distinguishes between small-scale and large-scale collective memory (section 4). Having described cultural (...) identity and collective memory, it argues that cultural identity is materialised in the environment when we retrieve and construct collective memories by integrating information from our biological memory with information in artifacts or in other people’s embodied brains (section 5). This essay ends with analysing how materialised cultural identities are constructed by using a niche construction approach from evolutionary biology (section 6). (shrink)

In the author's opinion the current resurgence of national issues could be interpreted as an attempt of Second World countries to counter the effects of oncoming late capitalism. Under such conditions national culture is often perceived as a bastion of national identity. The insurmountable problem encountered by these national cultures attempting to play such a role, is that under the present conditions of global late capitalism national culture as well, if it wishes to achieve recognition, is forced to accept (...) the logic of postmodern culture which is simultaneously commodified and international. Hence national culture in the Second World countries, which in the past could integrate everything from avant-garde to folk art, is bound to increasingly resemble tradition culture in First World countries. (shrink)

Renewed interest in the relationship between music education and cultural identity draws its vigor from strongly divergent sources. Globalized education and globalized musical culture supply new paradigms for understanding the central tasks of music education and their responsibility to a multicultural ethic of diversity, hybridity and difference. Yet recent anthropological studies of musical cognition and development emphasise both the centrality of ethnic and cultural particularism to the formation of musical awareness and the transcultural, factors in which such (...) particularism is embedded. These seemingly contrasting perspectives on the relationship of music to culture and identity offer a fertile context for redefining the place of music education in the curriculum. (shrink)

This essay outlines one way to conceptualise the relation between cultural identity, collective memory, and artifacts. It starts by characterising the notion of cultural identity as our membership to cultural groups and briefly explores the relation between cultural and narrative identity (section 2). Next, it presents how human memory is conceptualised on an individual and collective level (section 3) and then distinguishes between small-scale and large-scale collective memory (section 4). Having described cultural (...) identity and collective memory, it argues that cultural identity is materialised in the environment when we retrieve and construct collective memories by integrating information from our biological memory with information in artifacts or in other people’s embodied brains (section 5). This essay ends with analysing how materialised cultural identities are constructed by using a niche construction approach from evolutionary biology (section 6). (shrink)