Cultural Identity

Learning objectives
1. Better understanding of culture and identity and argument
around them
2. Comprehension of ethnic factor and national identity, and
cultural identity
3. Understanding the diversity of culture and identity in
Southeast Asia
4. Comprehension of variation of identity in Southeast Asia
5. Understanding the argument of the shared culture in
Southeast Asia
6. Understanding the shared identity argument in Southeast
Asia
7. Ability to comment on facilitation of regional identity
Learning outcomes
1. Ability to comprehend the concept of culture and identity
in general.
2. Ability to comment on aspects of culture and identity
3. Ability to comment on diversity of culture and identity
issues in Southeast Asia
4. Ability to evaluate impact of globalization on culture and
identity
5. Ability to engage in the debate on regional culture and
identity
6. Understanding the mechanism to promote regional
culture and identity.
Key information/content
1. Brief discussion on culture
1.1 Definition
- a way of life (Lintion, 1945)
- Culture is an integral composed of partly
autonomous, partly co-ordinated institutions. It is
integrated on a series of principles such as the
community of blood through procreation; the
specialization in activities ; and last but not least,
the use of power in political organization. Each
culture owes its completeness and self-sufficiency
to the fact that it satisfies the whole range of basic,
instrumental and integrative needs (Malinowski,
1969 : 40)
- (Culture) denotes an historically transmitted pattern of
meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited
conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of
which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their
knowledge about and attitudes towards life (Geertz, 1973 :
89)
- Culture is the set of distinctive spiritual, material,
intellectual and emotional features of society or a social
group and in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways
of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs
(UNESCO 2001)
- Culture refers to the customs, practices, languges, values
and world views that define social groups such as those
based on nationality, ethnicity, region or common interests
(http:// socialseport.msd.govt.ng/cultural-identity page 1,
accessed on March 12, 2012)
1.2 Classical semantic distinction of culture
1. Meaning or connotation or characteristics, that make
up the concept : (1) comprehensiveness (total, sum,
total, complex whole), (2) legacy (tradition, social
heritage, (3) norms (folkways, way of life), (4)
psychological characteristics (learning, habit), (5)
structural (system, integrated, patterned), (6) genesis
(creation, man-made, transmittable)
2. Reference/denotation or a set of real-life phenomenon.
Culture denotes capability and habits of human beings,
thus closely linked with civilization with
understanding that culture refers to cultural identity of
small community while civilization refers to externally
large community. Bases of civilization are of two
kinds (1) religion and (2) historical legacy.
(Lane & Ersson, 2005 : 18-28)
Or, other type of distinction of culture

-humanistic sense of culture : singular and evaluative.

Culture is what a person ought to acquire in order to
become a fully worthwhile moral agent. Some people
are more cultured, some human products are more
cultural than others.
- anthropological sense of culture : plural and
relativistic. World is divided into different cultures
worthwhile in its way. A person is a product of a
particular culture. Differences between human beings
are to be explained by differences in their cultures,
not their race. (Barnard and Spencer, 1996 : 136)
1.3 Role of Culture
- Social science assigns two crucial roles to
culture:
1. culture provides meaning such as by
organized religion,
2. culture provides rules of social action
which affords human beings in a society to
understand each other such as those
prescribed by major religions (Hall, 2003 :
134)
 - identifying with a particular culture helps
people feel they belong and gives them a sense of
security.
However, strong cultural identity expressed
in the wrong way can contribute to barriers
between groups. Members of smaller cultural
groups can feel excluded from society.
(http://socialreport.msd.govt.mz/cultural-
identity, page1)
1.4 Disputations on culture
- High culture or Culture
- (culture as) the best that has been
thought and said in the world
- a civilization, or culture is the high
point of civilization
- a concern of an educated minority elite
- an aesthetic and elitist concept
- concept of beauty, harmony, form and
quality
- Low culture, mass culture, popular culture
- raw, uncultivated (mass)
- authentic common culture of the people
- ordinariness
- culture as a production of capitalist
corporations
- mass – produced culture
- commodities produced by cultural
industry
- authentic folk culture produced by the
people (Barker, 2008 : 40-54)
1.5 Cultural identity
- culture can be analysed in terms of ethnic cultures,
religious cultures, historical legacies, and universal
cultures
- culture is identified with group, or better, community.
What is important is the nature of ties among members of
the groups measured by compactness
- high level of compactness means the group maintain
strongly shared cultural identity, capable of collective
action.
- low level of compactness means members seldom
interact or with few common ties
- cultural compactness may increase overtime when
groups are increasingly more conscious of the cultural
identity
Group and cultural identity
Groups Cultural Identity
Communal values Universal values
Low degree of Nations, races, Marketers, egalitarians
compactness churches
High degree of Ethnic groups, ects Social movements,
compactness environmental groups,
feminist group
- Culture, seen at macro level or the society, is often
discussed in term of cultural homogeneity which is the
case of society supports a single culture, the unity of
the people behind the culture while cultural
heterogeneity means fragmentation within society
(Lane and Ersson, 2005 : 3-5, 7)
- cultural identity = self and communal definitions
based around specific, usually political inflected,
differentiations: gender, sexuality, class, religion, race
and ethnicity, nationality. (Tomlinson, 2003 : 272)
- the concept of cultural identity incorporates the
shared premises, values, definitions, and beliefs and
the day-to-day, largely unconscious patterning of
activities.
- the concept of cultural identity can be used in two
different ways:
(1) it can be employed as a reference to the
collective self-owareness that a given group embodies
and reflects. Normally, it is defined by majority
group.
(2) it revolves around the identity of the
individual in relation to his or her culture. (Adler,
1977)
1.6 Cultural diversity
- There normally finds within a nation various
cultures each of which identifies with locality,
customs, ethnicity, religion, language or a
combination of some of them which the dominant
culture is promoted as national culture.
- Culture assumes varied forms such as song, dance,
musical instrument, poetry, literature, scripts,
ornament, garment, sport, recreation, architecture,
artifact, food, ritual, divination, etc.
-In a nation, there hardly find a single culture, even
among the presumably homogenous one such as
China, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam while
Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Malaysia
are known for multiculture components.
- Southeast Asia as multicultural areas with
interplay of religion, ethnicity, language, custom
and historical legacy. (Wolters, 1981).
-The motto of Indonesia, “unity in diversity”
emphasizes multiplicity of different factors, culture
no less. The motto is now applied to ASEAN
2. Identity
2.1 Brief discussion of identity
- denoting sameness and continuity
- identity is about sameness and difference
- referring to properties of uniqueness and
individuality
- qualities of sameness whereby persons may
associate themselves, or be associated by others,
with groups or categories on the basis of same
salient common features
- Three distinctions of identity : (1) subjectivity which is the
condition of being a person and a process by which we
become a person, (2) self-identity which is verbal
conceptions we hold about ourselves and our emotional
identification with those self-descriptions, and (3) social
identity which is the expectations and opinions that others
have of us. (Barker, 2008 : 215)
- Personal identity locates deep in the unconsciousness as a
durable and persistent sense of sameness of the self
- in anthropology, it emphasizes the individual’s social and
cultural surroundings and the mechanism of socialization
and cultural acquisition
- The sense of sameness or identity refers to commonalities
associated with groups or categories (Byson, 1996 : 292)
- Defining identity is linked to the way in which a
community constructs conceptions of people and life.
- Identity crisis begins with the finding that W.W.II
causes a number of people feeling the loss of a sense of
personal sameness and historical continuity.
In modern usage it suggests that a shared community
has largely dissolved, leaving people without a clear sense
of identity.
- Identity politics, prominent since late 1960’s is
associated with ethnic and religious minorities, as well as
with feminist and lesbian, and gay movements, (Plummer,
2003 : 281-2)
2.2 Race and ethnicity
Race originates in biological discourses of social
Darwinism that stresses lines of descent and type of
people. Concept of race refers to alleged biological and
physical characteristics, the most obvious of which is skin
pigmentation. This frequently links to intelligence and
capability which help ranking groups in a hierarchy of
social and material superiority and subordination. Racial
classification constituted by power is at the root of racism.
Radicalization or race formation is founded on the
argument that race is a social construction and not a
universal or essential category of biology.
 Ethnicity : a cultural concept centered on the
sharing of norms, values, beliefs, cultural
symbols and practices. Formation of ethnic
groups relies on shared cultural signifiers that
have developed under specific historical, social
and political contexts.
It is also argued that ethnic groups are not
based on primordial ties or universal cultural
characteristics possessed by specific group.
Ethnicity is formed by the way we speak about
group.
 Ethnicity is a relational concept that is
concerned with categories of self-identification and
social ascription. Thus, what we think of as our
identity is dependent on what we think we are not.
Ethnicity is constituted through power relations
between groups. It signals relations of marginality,
of the centre and the pherifery. This occurs in the
context of changing historical forms and
circumstances. The centre and the margin are to be
grasped through politics of representations.
(Barker, 2008 : 247-251)
3. National identities
3.1 - The nation-state, nationalism and national identity are not
“naturally” occurring phenomena but contingent historical-
cultural formations. They are socially and culturally constructed
as collective forms of organization and identification.
- The nation-state is a political concept that refers to an
administrative apparatus deemed to have sovereignty over a
specific space or territory within the nation-state system.
- National identity is a form of imaginative
identification with the symbols and discourse of the nation-state.
- National identity is a form of identification with
representations of shared experiences and history. These are
told through stories, literature, popular culture and media.
- Nations are not simply political formations but systems of
cultural representation by which national identity is
continually reproduced through discursive action. The
nation-state as a political apparatus and a symbolic form also
has a temporal dimension since political structure endure and
change. The symbolic and discursive dimensions of national
identity narrate and create the idea of origins, continuity and
tradition.
- However, national cultural identities are not conterminous
with state borders. Various global diasporas – African,
Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Polish, English, Irish, etc. – attest to
national and ethnic cultural identities that span the borders of
nation-states. Few states have ethnically homogeneous
populations.
3.2 Imagined community
- Nation is an imagined community
-It is imagined because the member of even the smallest
nation will never know most of their fellow members,
meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each
lives the images of their communion
- The nation is imagined as limited because even the
largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living
beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie
another nations.
- It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was
born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution
were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely ordered
hierarchical dynastic realm.
-Finally, it is imagined as a community because,
regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation
that may prevail in each, the nation is always
conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship.
Ultimately, it is in this fraternity that makes it
possible, over the past two centuries, for so many
millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly
to die for such limited imaginings. (Anderson,
1983 : 15-16)
4. Culture in Southeast Asia
4.1 Sources of culture
: Pre – religion – supernaturalism, ancestor worship

Religion : Hindu - Devaraja, court rituals, gods,

law, mandala, source of art form
caste, architecture.
Buddhism - Cakravatin, dharmaraja, power
restraint, monkhood, Sangha.
Islam -Sultanate, frugality, ummat,
haji, jihad.
Christianity -State-church relation,
brotherhood.
Confucianism - Emperor, examination system,
familial piety.
Ethnicity : Malay - Kerajaan, folk belief and
practice, arts and architecture
Tai-Thai - Folk belief, social hierarchy,
arts and architecturs
Chinese -clan, ancestor worship, arts and
architecture.
Javanese -folk belief, social hierarchy, arts
Minorities -Clothings, cultivation, customs
Western legacy - systematized bureaucracy
- foreign language usage
- clothings
- democratic form of government
- cosmopolitanism
Globalization - Mass consumption
- Media consumption
- Human rights
- Democratization
- Environmentalism
- Mass culture
Globalization and cultural identity
- Globalization refers to an intensified compression of the
world and our increasing consciousness of the world.
Other than economic perspective, globalization is
concerned with issues of cultural meaning where values
and meanings attached to places now involve networks
extended far beyond immediate physical locations. (Held
et all, 1999).
- Globalization effects seen in terms of an unstoppable
intrusion of the Western, industrialized or modernized form
of cultural expression though consumerist lifestyle,
entertainment and cosmopolitanism, has been hurting
developing country’s cultural identity, causing degradation
among the young generation.
- Globalization is seen as an extension of western cultural
imperialism. The argument is made of the obvious power
of globalized capitalism to distribute and promote its
cultural goods.
- However, it is counter argued that cultural identity is
much more the product of globalization than its victim.
Tomlinson (2003) argues the case of the up surging power
of local culture that offers resistance to the force of
capitalist globalization. State promotes national : identity
deliberately constructed and maintained and amplified,
regulated it through law, education and media.
4. Argument for shared culture in Southeast Asia
1. Art : traditional literary form, performing arts
and singing, flower arrangement.
2. Architecture : raised house/house on pile (except
Vietnam), wood plank and bamboo, palm/
thached roofing
3. Clothings : headwear, sarong, loin cloth, proper
religious dressing, embroidery, weaving,
silk cloth, pattern design
4. Cuisine : Cooked rice (fried), herbal ingredients in a
dish, basic combination of fish and
vegetable, fruit, sweet, cooking method and
utensils, palm sugar.
5. Agriculture/horticulture : Wet rice/hill farm, gardening/
orchard, coconut, fruit tree
6. Body embellishment : Ring, earring, necklace, belt,
bracelet, hair piece, hair styling
7. Habit : Betel nut chewing, tooth-filing,
betel nut set, ear piecing, daily
bath, pattern of child raising,
teacher-student relation, respect
for elders
5. Argument for shared identity in Southeast Asia
1. Physical appearance : Brown (fair) skin, short, black hair
and eyes
2. Habits : Eating with bare hand, walking
unshod, no shoe in the house, sitting/
sleeping on floor with / without mat,
politeness, emotional restraint, etc.
3. Entertainment : Musical instruments, traditional
performance, shadow play, folk
theatre, bull/buffalo fighting, cock
fighting, fish fighting, traditional
martial art, boat racing, drum beating,
kite flying, etc.
6. Factors facilitating regional identity
1. Based on identifiable shared cultural practice and
observable identity.
2. Identifying certain obvious commonalities particularly
those concerning daily life.
- This is to raise awareness of being the same
through what people witness daily among them and
those among their neighbouring countries. Awareness
will generate belongingness.
Strategy to forge awareness or belonging should be
based on (1) exposure, (2) representation, (3)
promotion, and (4) prioritization.
3. Promotion of people-to-people contact in (1) physical
contact facilitated by better tourism/travel
arrangement, (2) visual contact through popular media
such as newspaper, radio and particularly television
plus internet, and (3) perceptual contact whereby
people internalize what they read, hear and see.
(Withaya 2010 : )
4. State and public sector cooperation in promotion
regional identity.
List of possible questions/discussion themes
1. In what way culture is important for you?
2. What do you expect out of cultural show?
3. What form of culture do you encounter in your
society?
4. Can culture be constructed, and in what way it is
constructed?
5. What does it mean by local culture? Name some.
6. Are you for or against national culture, and why?
7. What do you think of cultural imperialism?
8. What are factors that identity is related to?
 9. Name some of the characteristics of religious
identity (based on religion that you belong to).
10. Do your government promote national identity?
What are elements of the national identity
promoted?
11. Is cultural diversity good or bad thing? Give some
explanation.
12. In what way cultural identity can be depicted?
13. In what way globalization destroy cultural identity
of a nation?
14. What is the role of mass media vis-à-vis cultural
identity?
15. What are cultural identities that Southeast Asia
share?
16. How can cultural identity of Southeast Asia be
promoted?
17. ASEAN promotes cultural diversity, is this a good
approach? Explain.
List of teaching sources/references
Adler, Peter (1977). “Beyond Cultural Identity : Reflections on
Multiculturalism” in Richard Buslin, ed., Culture Learning. East-
West Center Press : 24-41.
Anderson, Ben (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London : Verso.
Barker, Chris (2008). Cultural Studies : Theory and Practice. Sage, 3rd
edition.
Barnard, Alan and Jonathan Spencer, eds., (1996). “Culture” in
Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London and
New York : Routledge : 136-142.
Beeson, Mark (2004) ed., Contemporary Southeast Asia : Regional
Dynamics, National Differences. Pal grave.
Berger, Mark T. (2002). “Battering down the Chinese Walls: The Antinomies
of Anglo-American Liberalism and the History of East Asian Capitalism
in the Shadow of Cold War,” in C.J.W. – L. Wee, eds, Local Culture and
the New Asia: Culture and Capitalism in Southeast Asia. Singapore:
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies : 77-106.
Burling, Robbins (1965). Hill Farms and Padi Fields : Life in Mainland
Southeast Asia. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall Inc.
Byron, Reginald (1996). “Identity” in Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer,
eds., Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London and
New York: Routledge : 292.
Daweewarn, Dawee (1982). Brahmanism in Southeast Asia (From the
Earliest Time to 1445 A.D.). New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private
Limited.
Farnham, England (2009). Southeast Asia Culture and
Heritage in a Globalized World. Ash gate.
Hall, John A. (2003). “Culture” in The Blackwell, Dictionary
of Modern Social Thought. ed., William Outwait,
Blackwell Publishing : 133-7.
Held , D. et all (1999). Global Transformations : Politics,
Economic and Culture. Cambridge, Polity.
Higham, Charles (2002). Early Culture of Mainland
Southeast Asia. Bangkok : River Books.
Jones, David Martin (2010). Democratization, Civil Society
and Liberal Middle Class Culture in Pacific Asia.
London and New York: Routledge.
Keyes, Charles F. (1977). The Golden Peninsula : Culture and
Adaptation in Mainland Southeast Asia. Macmillan
Publishing.
Labadi, Sophia (2010), “Introduction : Investing in Cultural
Diversity” International Social Science Journal. 199, March
: 5-13.
Lane, Jan-Erik and Svante Ersson, (2005). Culture and Politics: A
Comparative Approach. Ashgate, 2nd edition.
Maryanoa, Gerald F. (1967). Culture Contact and Culture
Conflict in Southeast Asia : An Exploration in International
Politics. Northern Illinois University.
McVey, Ruth (1992) ed., Southeast Asian Capitalists. Southeast
Asia Program. Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University.
Plummer, Ken (2003). “Identity” in William Outwait ed. The
Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought.
Blackwell Publishing : 280-2.
Roxaslim, Aurora (2005). Southeast Asia Art and Culture :
Ideas, Forms and Societies. Jakarta.
Souchou, Yao (2001). House of Glass, Modernity and the State
in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies.
Tarling, Nicholas (1998) ed., Nations and State in Southeast
Asia. Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, William L. (1970). Land, Man and Culture in
Mainland Southeast Asia. Ann Abor : University Microfilm
International.
Tilakasiri, Jayadeva (1999). The Asian Shadow Play. Sri
Lanka: Vishva Lekha Publications.
Tomlison, John (2003). “Globalization and Cultural Identity,” :
269-277.
Turton, Andrew and Shigeharu Tanabe (1984), eds., History
and Peasant Consciousness in Southeast Asia. Osaka:
National Museum of Ethnology.
UNESCO (2001) UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural
Diversity. Available from
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/00127i/127160m.pdf
Van Esterik, Penny (2008). Food Culture in Southeast Asia.
Save WestPoint, Conn. : Greenwood Place.
Wangard, David B. (2008) ed., Culture and Development in
Southeast Asia. Bangkok : White Lotus.
Withaya Sucharithanarugse (2010). “The Advancement of
People to People Relations,” Indonesia-Thailand
Relations after 60 years and beyond. Bangkok : The
Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia : 76-85.
Wolters, O.W. (1981). “Culture, History and Region in
Southeast Asian Perspective” in R.P. Anand and
Purification V. Quisumbing, ed., ASEAN Identity,
Development and Culture. University of the Philippines
Law Center and East-West Center : 1-40.
Wolters, O.W. (1999). History, Culture and Region in
Southeast Asia. Cornell University.
Woodier, Jonathan Save (2008). The Mainland Political
Change in Southeast Asia : Karaoke Culture and the
Evolution of Personality. Cheltenham, U.K. : Edward
Edgar.
Teaching methodology
1. Compilation of list of national culture and identity
by the student.
2. Identifying the pro and con of mass culture.
3. Short essay on identity crisis of a nation.
4. Quiz on student’s perception of certain traditional
or national culture
5. A term paper of globalization on cultural identity of
a country.