Cultural Idintities

Introduction Cultural identity refers to the identity elements of a group of people or a particular culture, or even an individual who belongs and influenced by a certain group or culture. Different current cultural researches and social theories have examined cultural identity. Recently, a new type of identification has appeared which analyze the recognizing of the individual as a integrated subject within a collection of different cultural identifiers. These cultural identifiers might be the fruit of diverse conditions involving: history, gender, sexuality, language, religion, race, ethnicity and nation.

However, The divisions between cultures may be very fine in particular parts of the world ( that the citizens have different ethnics and social community is supported by shared social values and beliefs) , in places such as the United States or Canada. The cultural researches view on race and ethnicity certainly affirms the influences of the intersections of ethnicity, race and class. However, it has aimed to avoid the curtailment of these forms to class and the capitalism functions.

As an alternative, cultural studies has tended to examine: the representation of cultural meanings of race and ethnicity, race and cultural politics, and finally the relationship between class, race and gender(Barker, 2008).. This essay will explain and discuss the idea that cultural identities are not fixed but have histories and undergo transformation in relation to race and ethnicity. The essay will be focused on ethnicity and race as categories of cultural identity. Indeed, it is the examination of the degrees of race and ethnicity in terms of identity that imparts the cultural studies method its typical edge.

Main body Firstly, The meaning of the word race carries the traces of its origins in the biological claims of social Darwinism that intensify ‘types of people’ and ‘lines of descent’. Here the concept of race attribute to ostensible physical and biological characteristics, the most obvious of which is the color of the skin . These features, usually linked to ‘intelligence’ and ‘capabilities’, are chosen in order to rank ‘racial zed’ groups of people in a hierarchy of social and material dominance and servility. These racial categories, structured by and constitutive of power, are at the base of racism.

Barker argued that:” The idea of ‘racialization ‘is established on the argument that race is asocial conception and not a universal or essential form of biology. ” (Barker, 2008). It is argued that Races do not appear separate of representation. Rather, they are emerged in and by symbolic representation in a process of social political power clash (Hall, 1990,1996d, 1997c). Therefore, visible attributes are converted into race signifiers. This involves the inauthentic appeal to fundamental biological and cultural difference.

As Hall argues: “Accepting that skin ‘colour’, however meaningless we know it to be, has a strictly limited material basis in biology, opens up the possibility of engaging with theories of signification which can highlight the elasticity and emptiness o f racial’ signifiers as well as the ideological work which has to be done in order to turn them into signifiers o f race’as an open political category, for it is struggle that determines which definitions of’race’will prevail and the conditions under which they will endure or wither away. (Hall,1992) In Britain, Australia and America the historical creation of ‘race’ is one of power and inferiority. That is, people of colour have gotten constitutionally subordinate positions in relation to many areas of ‘life-chances’. British Afro-Caribbeans, African-Americans and Australian Aboriginal peoples have been underprivileged in :the labor market, the housing market ,the education system ,the media and other types of cultural representation.

In this context, race position (or racialization) has been inherently racist for it involves categories of social, economic and political dependency that are lived through the forms and converse of race. The meaning of racialization refers to ‘those exaples where social relations between people have been coordinated by the signification of human biological features in such a way as to specify and create distinguish social groups’ (Miles, 1989: 75). As a discursive construct, the meanings of’race’ change and are struggled over.

Thus, different groups are differentially racialized and subject to different forms of racism. As Goldberg argues, ‘the presumption of a single monolithic racism is being displaced by a mapping of the multifarious historical formulations of racisms . For instance, British Asians have formerly been subject to some types of stereotyping and have gotten a unlike place in the social and racial hierarchy from British Afro- Caribbeans. While British Asians might be second-class residents, black Britons are the third class.

British Asians may stereotyped as doctors and marketers but young Afro-Caribbean men in Britain are seen as a criminals. The meanings of race differ over time and across space. For example, it has been argued (Barker, 1982) that the ‘new racism’ in Britain depends not on biological converse of superiority, like in South African seclusion, but on cultural differences that reject black people from being entirely a part of the British nation. In addition, the meanings of race differ between, America and Britain.

In Britain, in the 1920s when the migrants of Caribbean and Indian subcontinent arrived to the UK, the native were disturbed. This made questions of national identity an important level through which racialization applied. However, Miles (1989) has claimed that the history of the modern United States started with the eviction and racial extermination of native American citizens and continued through the history of slavery (Barker, 2008). Secondly, with regards to the cultural concept “Ethnicity”, ethnic group is a group of individuals who share common believes, languages values and culture.

The creation of’ ‘ethnic groups’ depends on shared cultural practices that have been developed and changed under particular historical, political and social contexts. They instigate a belonging sense based, at least in part, on a common mythological pedigree or specific beliefs.. However, some argued that ethnic groups are not based on initial ties or universal (common) cultural features acquired by a certain group. Rather, they are shaped through discursive and digressive practices. “Ethnicity is formed by the way we speak about group identities and identify with the signs and symbols that constitute ethnicity. (Barker, 1982). Barker assumed that Ethnicity is a ‘relational’ concept that is related with forms of self-identification and social attribution. Thus, what people think of as their identity is dependent on what they think they are not . For example, Serbians are not Croatians or Albanians. To claim that ethnicity is not about cultural difference does not refers to the idea that distinctiveness cannot be socially created some signifiers that do evince universality. therefore, ‘metaphors’ of blood, kinship and homeland are usually implicated n the maintenance of ethnic limits. Moreover, according to Hall, 1996 : If the black subject and black experience are not stabilized by Nature or by some other essential guarantee, then it must be the case that they are constructed historically, culturally and politically – the concept which refers to this is ‘ethnicity’. The term ethnicity acknowledges the place of history, language and culture in the construction of subjectivity and identity, as well as the fact that all discourse is placed, positioned, situated, andall knowledge is contextual. Hall,1996c: 446) However, the concept of ethnicity does have some problems of using it and it is still a conflicted term. For example, white Anglo-Saxons frequently use the concept of ethnicity to refer to people with different skin color. therefore, Asians, Africans and African-Americans are seemed to be ethnic nation but the English or white Anglo-Saxon Americans are not. In this case whiteness is regarded as a accepted universal. On the other hand, anyone else is seen to have been recognized by their ethnicity. However, white English, American or Australian people do creat ethnic communities.

As Dyer (1997) has assumed, studying whiteness ‘is about making whiteness strange rather than treating it as a taken for granted touchstone of human ordinariness’. frequently, whiteness is correspond with normality and thus becomes invisible so that people do not think it requires attention. though, as Dyer noted, the claim that whiteness is a historical invention does not mean that it can simply be ignored. (Barker, 2008). Ethnicity is structured by power relations between nations. It indicates relations of Marginalization, of the centre and the edge. This arises in the context of changing historical types and circumstances.

Here, the centre and the margin may to be controlled through the politics representation. As Brah argues: ‘It is necessary for it to become axiomatic that what is represented as the “margin” is not marginal at all but is a constitutive effect of the representation itself. The “centre” is no more a centre than is the “margin”‘ (Brah, 1996:226). Conclusion To sum up ,converse of ethnic inwardness are commonly emitted with those of nationality. For example, the nations of the industrialized west are often saw as ‘the centre’ in relation to a ‘ edge ‘ of ‘developing’ countries.

Further, history is full of examples of how one ethnic group has seen as central and first class to a meagre ‘other’. While Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa and ‘ethnic genocide ‘ in Bosnia are obvious examples, the representation of superiority and servility is no less relevant to modern Britain, America and Australia. Thus, race and ethnicity have been closely co-operated to categories of nationalism that shaped of the ‘nation’ as a shared culture needing that ethnic boundaries should not get across political boundaries. It has been argued that ethnicity, race and nationality are constructions that do not refer to already existent ‘things”‘( Barker,2008). Which means , ethnicity, race and nationality have histories and undergo transformation rather than universal biological ‘facts’. References Barker, Chris, (2008) “Ethnicity Race and Nation” from Barker, Chris, Cultural studies: theory and practice pp. 246-279, London: Sage Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of diaspora. Contesting identities. London: Routledge. Hall, Stuart. (1992). ”The Question of Cultural Identity. ” pp. 73-326. Cambridge: Cambridge Polity Press. Hall, Stuart. (1996),” Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies”, pp. 411-440. London: Routledge. Miles, Robert, (1982)” Racism and migrant Labour” ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) Miles, Robert,. (1989). “Racism”, London: Routledge. Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997) Bibliography Albertazzi, D and Cobley, P. (eds) (2010) The Media: an introduction (3rd edn), Harlow: Pearson. Rex, John, (1970) “Race Relations in Sociological Theory”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, pp. 161.