- What is cultural identity?
- Importance of cultural identity
- Elements of cultural identity
- Examples of cultural identity
- Loss of cultural identity
We explain what cultural identity is, the elements that compose it and various examples. Also, how it changes or is lost.
What is cultural identity?
The identity cultural is the set of sociocultural manifestations (beliefs, traditions, symbols, traditions Y values) that provides individuals belonging to a community a sense of belonging and communion with their peers.
In other words, it is a form of collective identification, through which the members of a certain group social (understood as a culture) differ from those who are not part of it.
We all have a cultural identity, which is largely determined by the conditions of birth and by the hegemonic (majority) culture received. However, the subgroups to which you belong within your culture also play a role.
Thus, within an “official” culture (generally coinciding with the culture or National identity), there are different subcultures or subgroups that, despite being part of the majority, present different traits.
Cultural identities, however, are not monolithic or total. A person may be more or less traditional in their way of understanding and exercising their identity and culture, or they may tend towards multiculturalism, that is, towards coexistence more or less harmonic elements from different human cultures.
Importance of cultural identity
Cultural identity can be very relevant in dealing with others, especially when it is built in opposition to others, or in resistance to others. On the other hand, it can also be an ally when it comes to experiencing the society from a more open point of view.
The knowledge and acceptance of one's own cultural identity allows facing those of others from the tolerance and understanding, without feeling that the way others do things is a threat to their own.
Cultural identity is part of who you are and your own history. It constitutes an important legacy that migrants carry with them and contribute to the society that gathers them, as much as the latter offers them a new one. In the end, like all identities, the cultural one is porous, mobile, not necessarily strict.
Elements of cultural identity
All cultural identity is defined, broadly speaking, by some of the following elements:
- Tongue. A significant percentage of all cultural identity resides in the language, that is, in the language that is spoken, but also in the geographic and social dialects with which that language is spoken. Thus, for example, regions of a nation They may have a different cultural identity from another, despite professing the same national identity.
- Religion. The religiosity and the moral, ethical and mystical traditions of one culture can be similar or substantially different from those of another, depending on historical patterns, and this plays a fundamental role in cultural identity, even in the case of atheists.For example, Westerners tend towards a Christian morality (Catholic or Protestant), since it was the majority religion for many centuries.
- Ethnicity. Racial and ethnic origins often have an important bearing on cultural identity, as communities have traditionally been grouped around common ideas of race, culture, and culture. geography. For example, the African American cultural identity in the United States is one of the most intense and combative within the American national identity.
- Social class. The Social strata of a community also share cultural identity traits that may be unique, or that allow them to identify their members from one another. A form of speech, dance or a shared imagination, usually distinguish the working classes of the wealthy.
Examples of cultural identity
Some examples of all of the above are as follows:
- The Hong Kong identity. While the town Hong Kong is politically, territorially and formally part of the People's Republic of China, the fact that almost a century passed under British colonial rule (until 1997) before being returned to China, forever marked its traditions and its way of identification cultural. So now there is a conflict political and sociocultural among Hong Kongers, speaking Cantonese and English, identified with the democracies western, and traditional communist china.
- The Goajiro Indians. Belonging to the Wayuu ethnic group, one of the few Caribbean peoples that more or less fully survived the Spanish conquest and colonization, these inhabitants of both Colombia and Venezuela have a strong cultural identity that separates them from both Latin American nations, despite being citizens formal of these. The Wayuu speak their own language (Wayuunaiki) and are governed, as far as the State allows, by codes of Justice their own and ancestral, which is why they are usually feared.
Loss of cultural identity
Cultural identity is not something immutable or fixed, but can change, reformulate and be influenced by other cultures. This exchange can take place in a kind and peaceful way, through social relationships, cultural or commercial, in which both participants exchange practices, ways of thinking and influence each other.
In other cases, the exchange occurs in a unidirectional, violent way, through relations of domination, colonization and submission, such as those imposed by the European empires on their colonies during the era of Imperialism.
These processes of change of cultural identity can be called differently:
- Acculturation When elements of one's own culture are replaced by those from another, as a consequence of acts of violence: conquest, invasion, colonization, etc.
- Transculturation. When two or more cultures exchange elements, usually accompanying activities of commercial or economic exchange, etc. They are natural and inevitable phenomena that enrich both cultures.
- Inculturation. When an individual embraces elements from different cultures and assumes them as his own, without feeling the need to defend some as "his own".