Culture, Community and Identity


‘" Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future is contained in time past’
T.S.Elliot

Making sense, both personally and collectively, of a rapidly changing world, has recently moved centre stage in political, policy making, and academic arenas.

This short course explores how individuals and groups locate themselves within the fast moving contexts of globalization and regionalisation.

Traditional approaches to the narrative construction of identity rested on the individual's relationship to family and community narratives. Are these relationships changing, if so in what ways and what are the social implications of such changes?

The aim of the course is to examine how traditional and contemporary ideas about identity are being influenced by the process of Globalization. Students will be invited to examine the impact of Globalization on an "identity issue" of their choice.

SYLLABUS OUTLINE

  1. The Social Construction of Identity as a Narrative Process
    • Narrative construction and the evolution of language.

  2. Globalisation and the restructuring of Life Stories
    • Consumerism, Individuation and the rediscovery of ‘lost
    communities.
    • Global village or the Death of Communities?
    • Identity in the flow of ‘Liquid Modernity’.

  3. Emplacement and Embodiment
    • A sense of place.
    • Happy in their skin?

  4. Boundaries and Borders
    • Creating ‘the other’.
    • Natural and symbolic boundaries.

  5. Nationalism and Ethnicity.
    • The creation of imagined communities?

  6. Diaspora and Transnational Identities.
    • Identities across time and space.

  7. Asylum, Refugees and Fortress Europe.
    • The state of in between identities.

  8. Europe and the Post- Colonial gaze.
    • Postcolonial Identities.

  9. Globalization and Identity Politics.
    • New World New Politics?

10. Future Identities.
    • Post human and cyber identities.