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The metamorphoses of cultural identity.(Identities, Cultures, and Creativity)by Selim AbouCultural identity is equated with ethnicity, but cultural identification can occur on different levels, such as the ethnic group, the national culture and in a cultural affiliation that transcends national boundaries. The metamorphoses of cultural identity occur through processes of acculturation when different groups come into contact. Two stages of acculturation can be identified: a stage of material acculturation in the first generation of migrants and a stage of formal acculturation involving reinterpretation of the original culture by the second generation.© COPYRIGHT 1997 DiogeneTen years ago, an issue of the journal L’Homme et la Societe was entitled "La Mode des identites."(1) Most of the articles were about cultural identity, but the basic thrust of the work was "a critique of the `fashion’ of identity calling into question the validity of a notion as striking as it is uncertain."(2) Recently, a special issue of the journal Sciences Humaines, entitled "Identite et identities,"(3) dealt with personal, familial, social, professional identities and only spoke of cultural identity marginally and in a roundabout way. Finally, in a manual of Sociologie politique published by the Presses Universitaires de France,(4) the author takes to task the notion of ethnicity inherent to cultural identity and pushes the critique of the ethnic group to the point of negating its objective existence. Must we think then that the notion of cultural identity is henceforth obsolete, that it has lost all pertinence?In reading these critiques, we realize that what is called into question are the distortions of the notion of cultural identity imposed on current language by certain ideologies. Whether the notion be considered at the level of ethnic groups, the nation state, or the supranational entity, ideological discourse of all stripes receives attributes that are not only characteristic of the phenomenon but even deform and denature it The "fixity" of identity, the "homogeneity" of culture, the "substantiality" of cultural identity and other attributes that make ethnicity a euphemistic substitute for racism, are of course phantasms, which criticism picks up from the literary genre called discourse analysis. Certain sociologists or political scientists blithely move on from there to deny the reality of the phenomenon referred to by the notion of cultural identity and to denigrate the conceptual apparatus that allows us to grasp it, much to the astonishment of anthropologists.Since 1981 we have put the emphasis on the triple dimension -- historical, sociological, and psychological -- of cultural identity, on its dynamic and relational character, on its mobility and metamorphoses. We have also identified the diverse "types" of ideological manipulation which it can be the object of for political ends.(5) Subsequent research permit us to refine both the approach to the phenomenon and the conceptual apparatus by which we grasp its various facets. It might be useful here to recapitulate the principal characteristics of cultural identity, by briefly analyzing its foundations, that is, the meaning and the role of ethnicity that, in diverse and changing forms, serves as its reference points, and its metamorphoses, that is, the incessant process of modification that affect it and that it incorporates.The Foundations of Cultural IdentityCultural identity fundamentally refers to ethnicity. This characterizes a group whose members claim a common history or origin and a specific cultural heritage, no matter that the history or origin is often mythicized or that the cultural legacy is never totally homogeneous. The essential thing is that these common elements are lived by the concerned group as distinctive characteristics and perceived as such by others. It is equally unimportant that these ethnic groups were produced or exploited by colonial power or local power for economic and political ends. On the one hand, these groups were not created from nothing; on the other hand, it is significant that ethnic identity has the property of polarizing and amplifying conflicts of an economic or political order. Finally, we know that the ethnic group is neither "substantial" nor "original," since two or more ethnic groups can meld into one by "merger" or "incorporation" and that, in the other direction, an ethnic group can split into two or more groups by "division" or "proliferation."(6) It is thus futile to give preponderance to these imaginary attributes of ethnicity as grounds for denying its existence or importance.(7)As an American anthropologist notes, the sense of ethnicity is "persistent": "It has survived in diverse forms and in different names, but it is not dead and the city-dweller of the twentieth century is closer than he thinks to his ancestors of the stone age."(8) In order to grasp the diverse forms that ethnicity takes, as the foundation of cultural identity, it is necessary to consider it at three different levels: as allegiance to the relatively homogeneous cultural patrimony of the ethnic group; as affiliation to the somewhat heterogeneous cultural heritage of the nation in which the group is inserting itself; as reference to the common cultural traits of a supranational ensemble of established groups or nations.(9) It goes Diogenes Spring 1997 n177 p3(13) Page 1- Reprinted with permission. Additional copying is prohibited. -G A L E G R O U PInformation IntegrityThe metamorphoses of cultural identity.(Identities, Cultures, and Creativity)without saying that the culture of the entity under consideration -- ethnic group, nation state, supranational ensemble -- separates into subcultures as a function of the social class, the professional category, and the regional particularities that structure the entity. But, in the eyes of the anthropologist, these determinations are secondary, and methodologically they can be set aside for purposes of analysis.The ethnic group distinguishes itself from the nation in that it is not politically organized, that is, does not have a state structure, while the nation "integrates populations into a community of citizens whose existence legitimizes the interior and exterior action of the state."(10) The ethnic group lays claim to a cultural patrimony that symbolizes its history and that, in its turn, is symbolized by one of its own elements, such as language, religion, or a


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