The Question of Cultural Identity

Assigned for Media & Culture seminar. Read for China paper. Also, Stuart Hall = baller.

Bibliographic

 * Hall, Stuart. "The Question of Cultural Identity." Modernity and its Futures. Polity Press. Cambridge. 1992.

Content

 * "national identities are not something we are born with, but are formed and transformed within and in relation to representation. We only know what it is to be 'English' because of the way 'Englishness' has come to be represented, as a set of meanings, by English national culture. It follows that a nation is not only a political entity but something which produces meanings - a system of cultural representation" (292)


 * "National cultures are composed not only of cultural institutions, but of symbols and representations. A national culture is a discourse- a way of constructing meanings which influences and organizes both our actions and our conceptions of ourselves" (292-293)

How is Narrative of National Culture Told?

 * 1) Narrative of the Nation - "it is told and retold in national histories, literatures, the media and popular culture" (293)
 * 2) "There is the emphasis on origins, continuity, tradition and timelessness" (294)
 * 3) "The invention of tradition" after Hobsbawm and Ranger (294)
 * 4) "foundational myth" -> "a story which locates the origin of the nation, the people and their national character so early that they are lost in the mists of not 'real' but 'mythic' time" (294-295)
 * 5) "pure, original people or folk" (295)

Deconstructing the 'National Culture'

 * 1) "Most modern nations consist of disparate cultures which were only unified by a lengthy process of violent conquest" (296)
 * 2) "nations are always composed of different social classes, and gender and ethnic groups" -> "unify across social divisions by providing them with an alternative point of identification- common membership of the 'family of the nation'" (297)
 * 3) Nation created thru colonization, making a national culture in opposition to its colonial other (297) -> much like metropole and periphery

Globalization

 * Three Ideas (300)
 * 1) National identities are being eroded b/c of cultural homogenization
 * 2) National and local being strengthened by resistance
 * 3) National identities declining but new identities of hybridity are taking their place


 * "The more social life becomes mediated by the global marketing of styles, places and images, by international travel, and by globally networked media images and communication systems the more identities become detached - disembedded - from specific times, places, histories, and traditions, and appear 'free-floating'" (303) -> "cultural supermarket effect"


 * "instead of thinking of the global replacing the local, it would be more accurate to think of a new articulation between 'the global' and 'the local.'" -> producing NEW globals and locals. (304)
 * also, globalization v. unevenly distributed


 * "In the latest form of globalization, it is still the images, artefacts and identities of Western modernity, produced by the cultural industries of 'Western' societies (including Japan) which dominate the global networks" (305)

From readings At Cambridge