Cultural Essentialism

„Wer sind wir? Und wer sind dann die Anderen?“ Eine Konturierung des Kulturbegriffs bei Seyla Benhabib

by Anne-Sophie Reichert

Der Begriff der Kultur wird in der politischen Theorie sowie in der Politik selten präzise definiert, spielt jedoch in... more Der Begriff der Kultur wird in der politischen Theorie sowie in der Politik selten präzise definiert, spielt jedoch in zunehmendem Maße eine Rolle bei der Erklärung von
aktuellen globalen politischen Ereignissen und Prozessen. Während Kultur vor der
Aufklärung zu großen Teilen als  Legitimation und Erhaltung politischer
Machtstrukturen diente,  wurde  die  Kultur  in der  Moderne  durch die
„Wertausdifferenzierung“,  wie Max Weber die Dezentralisierung metaphysischer
Annahmen und die Emanzipation der Naturwissenschaften, der Jurisprudenz, der Moral
und der Ästhetik von allumfassender religiöser Weltanschauung nennt, zur Arena der
Oppositon (Benhabib 1999: 401).
Wie kann man versuchen den Kulturbegriff mit inhaltlichen Ausführungen in
bestimmter Art und Weise zu definieren, ohne dabei ausser Acht zu lassen, dass Kultur
und somit  auch kulturelle Identitäten im Sinne poststrukturalistischer  und
dekonstruktivistischer Ansätze fluide, variable und konstruierte Kategorien sind?
Eine positive Präzisierung erscheint gerade im Hinblick auf die zunehmende politische
Instrumentalisierung des Kulturbegriffs im internationalen politischen Geschehen von
hoher Wichtigkeit.

Managing the Tensions of Essentialism - draft (with Sue Lampitt)

by Robbie Duschinsky

Draft only; forthcoming in Sociology

This article will propose a new interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu, as a theorist of purity and impurity. Bourdieu’s... more This article will propose a new interpretation of Pierre Bourdieu, as a theorist of purity and impurity. Bourdieu’s writings indicate that through the adjudication of things or people as relatively impure or pure an image is constructed of their essential truth. Building from Bourdieu, we will show how themes of purity and impurity can be used to manage the tensions associated with attempts to impute an essence to human nature or to reality, ensuring that moral and epistemological significance of complexity is masked. This is the reason why themes of purity and impurity so often attend polarised worldviews, and why they are frequently mobilised for justifying and operating biopolitical processes of social stratification and regulation.

Judging and Constructing Self-Identity

by Robbie Duschinsky

Draft only; currently under review

In Purity and Danger, Douglas theorises purity and impurity in terms of the instantiation and disruption of a shared... more In Purity and Danger, Douglas theorises purity and impurity in terms of the instantiation and disruption of a shared symbolic order. Purity/impurity discourses act, according to Purity and Danger, as a homeostatic system which ensures the preservation of this social whole, generally encoding that which threatens social equilibrium as impurity. There have been calls for new social theory on this ‘under theorised’ topic. Presenting such further reflections, I argue that Douglas’ account is less a full explanation than a regularity. Representations of purity are only secondarily symbols of the social order. Rather, purity/impurity discourses are only associated with ‘matter out of place’ when phenomena are assessed for their relative deviation from an imputed state of ‘self-identity’: qualitative homogeneity and correspondence with their essence. Purity and impurity do more than judge self-identity however. They can play a fundamental role in its performative construction; they are well adapted for smuggling assumptions into our discourses regarding the essence of particular phenomena and forms of subjectivity, simplifying a complex world into a stark contrast between the dangerous and the innocent, the valuable and the valueless, the necessary and the contingent, the originary and the prosthetic, the real and the apparent, and the unitary and the fragmented.

Essentialism

by Bruce Mannheim

Co-authored with Susan A. Gelman

International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences

For a non-violent, non-essentialist Cambodia: a reply to Ryerson Christie

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. For a non-violent, non-essentialist Cambodia: a reply to Ryerson Christie. South East Asia Research 19, 635-641.

A rejoinder to a review of my book 'Cambodia’s Neoliberal Order: Violence, Authoritarianism, and the Contestation of... more A rejoinder to a review of my book 'Cambodia’s Neoliberal Order: Violence, Authoritarianism, and the Contestation of Public Space' (Routledge, 2010).

Communication and essentialism: Grounding the shared reality of a social category

by Anthony Lyons

Social Cognition

Essentialism is an ontological belief that there exists an underlying essence to a category. This article advances and... more Essentialism is an ontological belief that there exists an underlying essence to a category. This article advances and tests in three studies the hypothesis that communication about a social category, and expected or actual mutual validation, promotes essentialism about a social category. In Study 1, people who wrote communications about a social category to their ingroup audiences essentialized it more strongly than those who simply memorized about it. In Study 2, communicators whose messages about a novel social category were more elaborately discussed with a confederate showed a stronger tendency to essentialize it. In Study 3, communicators who elaborately talked about a social category with a naive conversant also essentialized the social category. A meta-analysis of the results supported the hypothesis that communication promotes essentialism. Although essentialism has been discussed primarily in perceptual and cognitive domains, the role of social processes as its antecedent deserves greater attention.

Creativity, Culture Contact, and Diversity

by Alfonso Montuori

Co-authored with Hilary Stephenson World Futures, 66: 266–285, 2010

Recent trends in the understanding of culture contact, with concepts such as
 hybridization, cosmopolitanism, and... more Recent trends in the understanding of culture contact, with concepts such as
 hybridization, cosmopolitanism, and cultural innovation, open up the possibility
 of a new understanding of human interaction. While the social imaginary is rich 
with images of conflict resulting from culture contact, images of creativity are 
far rarer. We propose the creation of an extensive research project to document
 cultural creativity, starting with obvious examples in the arts, and expanding into
all areas of life in order to counteract the present conflictual images and develop
a social imaginary with positive “attractor” images that can guide to greater
 creativity.

Entre o Essencialismo Rural de Fisteus e o Pós-modernimso urbano de Lisboa – uma Comparação (Im)Possível entre Lupe Gómez e Adília Lopes

by Burghard Baltrusch

Co-authored with Ana Bela Simões de Almeida, in Actas do VII Congreso Internacional de Estudos Galegos, ed. por Helena González Fernández e María Xesús Lama López, A Coruña: Edicións do Castro, 299-311. <http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2943687&gt;

Tanto a galega Lupe Gómez como a portuguesa Adília Lopes foram consideradas, nos seus respectivos contextos culturais,... more Tanto a galega Lupe Gómez como a portuguesa Adília Lopes foram consideradas, nos seus respectivos contextos culturais, como autoras rupturistas de obras com uma qualidade literária que até chegou a ser posta em questão. Porém, mantemos que ambas cultivam um discurso de índole autobiográfico extremamente fresco e vanguardista (no sentido sistemático do termo) e que, além disso, supõe um vínculo evidente entre as literaturas contemporâneas galega e portuguesa. Enquanto Lupe Gómez nos oferece com Fisteus era un mundo uma apologia do rural galego, que para uma parte da crítica resultou anacrónica e desconcertante, Adília Lopes deconstrói na sua Obra o falso cosmopolitismo pós-moderno, no qual a identidade nacional já não parece ter importância, para dar lugar à questão da identidade individual. A partir de textos seleccionados destas autoras, este estudo pretende fazer uma análise parcial da renovada importância que têm, hoje em dia, as velhas dicotomias rural/urbano, nacional/universal, feminino/masculino, infância/idade adulta, narradora/autora, entre outras, para as produções literárias na Galiza e em Portugal.