Cultural identity

Cultural identity is the sense of belonging of an individual or a social group to a particular cultural collective.

This can be a society, a certain cultural milieu or even a subculture. Identity is created by the idea of being culturally different from other individuals or groups, i.e. in a certain number of socially or historically acquired aspects such as language, religion, nation, values, customs and traditions or in other aspects of the living environment. The individual worldviews that shape a cultural orientation are heterogeneous and may well contradict each other.

Cultural identity thus arises from the discursive construction of the "own", which is brought about by the contrast to a real or merely imagined "other". This process is strongly influenced by feelings, whereby the own conveys a sense of safety, security and home.

Towards the "other" or the "stranger", which is often only defined as such in the process of forming identity (othering), non-perception, insecurity, aversion and even hatred can develop. When a group suffers oppression, exploitation, exclusion or discrimination, collective identity can provide it with a potential for self-assertion. In contrast, especially in traditional societies, cultural identity expresses itself in an unquestioned identification with the existing order.

According to George Herbert Mead, cultural identity presupposes the willingness to internalize the attitude of one's own group, to direct the norms and values of the community also against oneself, and to "load on one's own shoulders" a responsibility formulated by the collective and to commit oneself to the other community members. The individual is integrated into this cultural identity through socialisation or enculturation.

All concepts of cultural identity are inevitably associated with incoherence, depending on whether national, regional, ethnic, linguistic, religious, sexual or aesthetic-lifestyle components (the lifestyle) are in the foreground. Through the Internet and social media, cultural identities open up to the outside and can thus also be secondarily learned, adopted or constructed.

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.