Cultural Diversity
Cultural diversity in the Mediterranean I
1- Culture and identity:
Cultural identity as a construct: Identitas (lat. = the same): Nature is the same and it evolves at the same time Being and becoming Meaning and experience
Social constructionim: “It is concerned with showing how members of a group go about constructing a world of common experience” (David L. Preston)
Internalized attitudes and behaviors
The Big Other (Lacan and Zizek):
“ The [Big Other] is the symbolic order, society’s unwritten constitution, is the second nature of every speaking being : it is here, directing and controlling my acts ; it is the sea I swim in, yet it remains ultimately impenetrable – I can never put it in front of me and grasp it. It is as if we, subjects of language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some nameless all-pervasive agency.” (Zizek)
The concept of “habitus” (Bourdieu, The social construction of reality):
“Habitus is a cultural unconscious that organizes perception and thus determines – we should say overdetermines – the actions that constitute fields” (Richard Widick)
Language, body,
Social reproduction as mechanisms by which a social order perpetuates itself
Social constructivism:
“Universal human nature is not a very human thing. By acquiring it, the person becomes a kind of construct, built up not from inner psychic propensities but from moral rules that are impressed upon him from without. These rules, when followed determine the evaluation he will make of himself and of his fellow participants in the encounter, the distribution of his feelings, and of his fellow practices he will employ to maintain a specified and obligatory kind of ritual equilibrium.” (Goffman)
Ritual: repetition
Culture and dynamic identities:
_ Are we all the same?
Sharing/identity and difference Artistic creation: celebrating “the genes of the soul” (Amin Maalouf)
1- Culture and identity:
Cultural identity as a construct: Identitas (lat. = the same): Nature is the same and it evolves at the same time Being and becoming Meaning and experience
Social constructionim: “It is concerned with showing how members of a group go about constructing a world of common experience” (David L. Preston)
Internalized attitudes and behaviors
The Big Other (Lacan and Zizek):
“ The [Big Other] is the symbolic order, society’s unwritten constitution, is the second nature of every speaking being : it is here, directing and controlling my acts ; it is the sea I swim in, yet it remains ultimately impenetrable – I can never put it in front of me and grasp it. It is as if we, subjects of language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some nameless all-pervasive agency.” (Zizek)
The concept of “habitus” (Bourdieu, The social construction of reality):
“Habitus is a cultural unconscious that organizes perception and thus determines – we should say overdetermines – the actions that constitute fields” (Richard Widick)
Language, body,
Social reproduction as mechanisms by which a social order perpetuates itself
Social constructivism:
“Universal human nature is not a very human thing. By acquiring it, the person becomes a kind of construct, built up not from inner psychic propensities but from moral rules that are impressed upon him from without. These rules, when followed determine the evaluation he will make of himself and of his fellow participants in the encounter, the distribution of his feelings, and of his fellow practices he will employ to maintain a specified and obligatory kind of ritual equilibrium.” (Goffman)
Ritual: repetition
Culture and dynamic identities:
_ Are we all the same?
Sharing/identity and difference Artistic creation: celebrating “the genes of the soul” (Amin Maalouf)