10: Culture and identity Flashcards
Most influential trend in social science and humanities: increased attention to culture
Cultural turn
Why?
- Culture plays a more significant role in advanced societies
- Concept of culture and meaning focus of scholarly debate
- Cities are places of cultural diversity
Culture can be defined as ‘ways of life’ that involves 3 elements:
1. The values people hold: ideals and aspirations
2. The norms people follow: rules and principles
3. The material objects people use (consumer goods, buildings, facilities, transport systems, etc.
Interrelated
Material objects and urban landscapes give information about values and norms, and they have meaning through the ways people put them to use.
Representation is a key word in cultural studies
Central to the study of urban culture is the concept of discourse: a set of shared understandings
How to study urban culture?
- Iconography: the study of meanings behind urban landscapes (buildings, sculptures, photographs, film, etc.)
- Discourse analysis or semiotic approach (texts, writings or spoken language).
Key themes
1. Diversity and difference (subcultures or deviant subcultures)
* Focus on urban subcultures that are radically different
* Shared values (discourses) and ways of representation of such cultures
- Identity (the view that people take of themselves).
* Identity formation: the way that identities are shaped by many factors
* Subjectivity is central (how do people define themselves and how do others define them)
Postcolonial theory important approach of identity studies:
* Response to Western representations of non- Western cities and societies
* Response to ethnocentrism–the notion pojęcie that Western thought is superior
Edward Said (1978): Orientalism
The notion of the Orient is a Western invention
False ideas about the West as rational and civilized and the Orient as primitive.
The view of colonizer and not of the colonized
Postcolonial theory:
* Undermine podważać the idea that one culture is superior
* All cultures are mixtures: hybridity
* No pure, basic, underlying culture: authenticity
Questions of postcolonial studies:
* What is the effect of colonial is moncultures in
colonial cities?
What was the agency of colonized vs the power of colonizers?
Decolonization
Social construction of culture
Cultural studies and postcolonial theory emphasize that cultures are social constructs.
Benedict Anderson (1983): Imagined communities
* National identities are socially constructed
* Identification with the state involves the use of imagination
* Imaginations are produced by media (books, newspapers, television, twitter, etc.)
Urban identities are also imagined communities
Foucault and the carceral city
* The social construction of culture is the result of power and authority
* Power is a process, that exists through the recognition of others
* Discourses are a crucial component in the exercise of power
Carceral city- ‘miasto opiekuńcze’ współistniejąca sieć technologii dyscyplinarnych, za pomocą których kształtuje się i kontroluje obywateli
Cities are disciplinary societies
Citizens are limited by controlling mechanism
Critique: too much focus on power and discipline
Space is crucial to processes of identity:
Some people are excluded from public spaces
Why? Codes of behavior or culture
Result: spaces reinforce culture and power relations
cultural imperialism
POSTMODERNISM
Recent cultural shift in cities and urban studies:
Study of culture to understand language and discourse in urban settings.
Opposed to structuralist approach
Not one underlying mechanism/structure, but numerous shifting variables.
Urban divisions and inequality reflected in forms of representation, such as language, clothing, music etc.
‘Cultural turn’
Central features of Postmodernism
* There is no one true experience, but a plurality of possible experiences
* All experiences are mediated through cultural values
Those values are embodied in language or other
forms of representation
* Representations involve shared meanings= discourses
The cultural turn and postmodernism focus on representation, and not on (‘so-called’ reality)
Postmodernism has been heavily disputed, because:
It lacks coherence; there is no clear definition or underlying theory
It is meaningless, because it does not offer analytical or empirical knowledge (only representations, images, symbols and signs)
Postmodernists are not looking for objective findings or truth.
David Harvey: postmodernists mask the underlying meta-narrative of behavior.
‘Cultural turn’: interest in the role of people’s bodies:
* The body is used as metaphor to describe cities
* Bodily appearance and dress important signals about culture and social values
Corporeality
Grosz (1992): the city is a crucial factor in corporeality
.
Right to the city
Lefebre (1968): spatial relations are produced and contested within cities.
A call to action by social movements to demand access to urban life.
David Harvey
- The right to individual freedom and access to urban sources
- The right to change the city
Recent popular movements:
- Migrant’s and refugees right to the city - Women’s right to the city
- Gender and sexual diversity
New Urban Agenda (2016): Cities for all
Cities create and reflect gender roles:
* Socially constructed differences between men and women
* Reflection of a system of patriarchy
* Urban spaces reflects such patriarchal patterns
Private and public spaces
(Example: ‘Take Back the Night’ campaigns)
