Cultural identity is the identity of a group, culture, or something similar, or a person's association to a group or culture. Basically, the cultural identity makes a group/culture what it is. Each culture has its own things that make it different from others.
Cultural identity
Politicization of the term through the cultural turn
The concept of cultural identity has come into increased use since the "cultural turn", the anthropological redefinition and expansion of the formerly purely humanistic concept of culture in the social sciences in the 1990s. It is used both by advocates of a pluralization of identities and ways of life in the context of globalization and by proponents of the preservation of national or religious identities and traditions, which contributes to its fuzziness. An example of this is the German debate on a Leitkultur in 2000.
The term is often connoted with conflicts between bearers of different cultural identities, such as the rejection of attempts by a majority culture to culturally dominate or assimilate a minority. Efforts by traditional societies to strengthen their cultural identity despite adopting modern cultural elements are referred to as indigenization. When ethnic groups that have already been largely assimilated revive traditional elements and their ethnic identity and reintegrate them into their culture in a modified form, this is referred to as re-indigenization.
Formation of cultural identities through codes
The Israeli sociologist Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and his German colleague Bernhard Giesen distinguish the formation of cultural (group) identities through four types of codes with increasing levels of reflection:
- In the first, the primordial codes, group membership is regarded as natural.
- In the second group of codes, cultural identity is established through traditions and myths of origin.
- The third group, which Delanty calls cultural codes, refers to religious or transcendental referents such as God, reason, or the idea of progress.
- In the fourth group, the previously mentioned codes would be criticized and broken; instead of myths, traditions or metaphysical ideas, social and cultural contents of everyday life such as taste, material values or privileges would come to the fore.
The British sociologist Gerard Delanty adds a fifth and final group of identity-forming codes, which he calls discursivity. Here, the strong exclusions associated with the previously mentioned codes are withdrawn in the sense of a democratic consciousness, and the process of identity creation becomes transparent and reflected.