What is cultural identity and cultural hybridity? And how are these concepts important for professional pedagogical work?
Before the lecture we were asked to read a text 'Identities and Belonging' in the book Global Sociology (Cohen, Robin & Kennedy, Paul, 2007). I found the ideas quite interesting - it explained in a very clear way some terms with examples of different occasions. E.g. why and how such phenomena as nationalism, ostracizing and localism have happened. This was of course based on the writers theories, but to me it cleared many things!
In the lecture, cultural identities were sorted to three categories: local, national and transnational. We sorted our own life areas in a pie chart, where we first counted how big chuncks each area takes. These were family and friends, religion, work/studying, cosmopolitan, nationality (and politics), ethnic background and diaspora.
Local to me is my family and home, even though, I have lived for five years away from home, at 4 different places, and 7 different accomodations or flats. My family also moved to a new community in 2001, when I was 14 years old, and only a year ago I started to call that place my home town. I also have close relatives and friends living in many different countries, so family and friends is not only local to me.
National to me is of course my nationality, the behavior, thinking and identity of myself, which I regard as Finnish. Also, I see my religion as national or even transnational. I'll keep it under national, also because I belong to the Finnish state church.
Transnational to me is my studying. I study Art Education, and keep the art field so wide, that it is not possible to say it is just local or national. Also the feeling of being cosmopolitan, which I realized is quite narrow to me, is under the transnational - heading. I like to travel and get to know new people, cultures, and languages, but, I could not think of moving to other country than Finland for more than a few years.
This is a mindmap we created in our group from the slideshow.
What is cultural identity?
The feeling of belonging to a group. Everyone has more than one group where one belongs; family, work, school, free-time activities, maybe a church, a club or a board of some foundation. We have many different roles in different circumstances. Still, all the roles are based on our very selves. Our language and dialect, customs, behavior, way of thinking and values make the most of our cultural identity. I see these concepts to be very local, also to be even more part of our family than nationality.
What is cultural hybridity?
Cultural hybridity is the term that can be used, when different cultures mix, and something of a mixture is created. People, many, as myself - can be a hybrid. First of all, every family is a mixture with inheritance from two different backgrounds. Also, as my nationality is both Finnish and American, I've lived in the States for a few short periods, and because I have most of my relatives from my father's side there - I feel I partially belong there.
As artefacts it is harder to think what could be a hybrid. Computers have usually many different programmes, designing and parts that are mixture fro different countries. Maybe it could work as an example, though, not a very good one!
How are these concepts important for professional pedagogical work?
It is important to a teacher to understand our students don't nessesserily belong to one similar-thinking and -acting group. It is not only due to the nationality, but the family-cultures can also varie a lot within cultures. In one family all the family members talk with each others in a very kind and respectful way, in an other family everyone is used to talking straight forward and boldly of all things. One can not say one way of acting is better than the other - they are just different!
CV can be found on its own page!
