Identity is That Which is Given [Identity politics]

Butterflies and Wheels ^ | July 12, 2008 | Kenan Malik

[Uncle Ralph]

The anthropologist Margaret Mead once observed that in the 1930s, when she was busy remaking the idea of culture, the notion of cultural diversity was to be found only in the 'vocabulary of a small and technical group of professional anthropologists'. Today, everyone and everything seems to have its own culture. From anorexia to zydeco, the American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has observed, there is little that we don't talk about as the product of some group's culture. In this age of globalisation many people fret about Western culture taking over the world. But the greatest Western export is not Disney or McDonalds or Tom Cruise. It is the very idea of culture. Every island in the Pacific, every tribe in the Amazon, has its own culture that it wants to defend against the depredation of Western cultural imperialism. You do not even have to be human to possess a culture. Primatologists tell us that different groups of chimpanzees each has its own culture. No doubt some chimp will soon complain that their traditions are disappearing under the steamroller of human cultural imperialism.

. . .

This view of culture and identity has transformed the way that many people understand the relationship between equality and difference. For the Enlightenment philosophes, equality required that the state should treat all citizens in the same fashion without regard to their race, religion or culture. This was at the heart of their arguments against the ancien regime and has been an important strand of liberal and radical thought ever since. For contemporary multiculturalists, on the other hand, people should be treated not equally despite their differences, but differently because of them. . . .

[Uncle Ralph]

Heady stuff. 3,700 word essay. You've been warned.

[purpleraine]

I flunked anthro in college when I postited in the blue book that sitting in classes at the university and owning a car was better than wallowing in a hut in the jungles of Brazil. Nowadays, I’m not so sure I was right.

[caveat emptor]

Heady stuff. 3,700 word essay. You've been warned.

You're not actually admitting to reading stuff on that website, are you? I figured there must be an explanation, and checked the only site I could think of that a freeper might read which would reference it. Right? ;>)