Anthropology graduate program
Name of the course: Culture and Identity
ECTS: 5 points
Language: English
Course duration: 1 semester
Compulsory/ Elective course: compulsory in 8th semester
Hours per week: 2 hours of lecture and 1 hour of seminar classes (2L 1S 0P)
Exam: Students are required to fulfil the reading assignments (compulsory literature) in
preparation for the exam at the end of the semester; additionally recommended literature
will help to prepare for the exam. Each student (individual or group presentations) will be
asked to introduce into one text (compulsory literature), which will be discussed in each
of the seminar sessions. Active participation in seminar discussion is expected.
Course description:
The course “Culture and Identity” explores different approaches to those two key
concepts in cultural anthropology and related disciplines. The seminar is devoted to indepth reading and discussing texts, which the lecture introduces into. The course will thus
not only familiarize the participants with the concepts as such, but present them in a
contextualizing and comparative, cross-disciplinary perspective. The interrelation
between the two concepts shall be conveyed, as it is within social and cultural frames of
references, that identities are being formed. Lecture and seminar sessions 1-5 will draw
attention to the concept of culture as social practice (Bourdieu, Malinowski, Simmel), to
the social construction of identity (Erikson, Strauss) and to the multiplicity of identity in
modern society (Berger/Berger/Kellner). Sessions 6-10 will look into the dynamic
processes of cultural practice and identity formation through processes of identification,
distinction and stereotyping, particularly within national (Gellner, Said), ethnic (Barth,
Gilroy), or social/class frames of references (Bourdieu, Elias/Scotson, Goffman).
Sessions 11-15: In order to gain a deeper understanding of those dynamics, of discourses
on multiculturalism, culture conflicts&clashes of cultural identities, as well as of
concepts dwelling on the fluidity and hybridity of identity constructions, the migration
experience will in addition be referred to (Clifford, Fischer, Park, Sollors).
Course objectives:
Systematizing knowledge and advanced studying of key concepts in cultural
anthropology and related academic disciplines; increasing the understanding of the
scholarly context (schools / approaches), from which they emerged; further developing of
general professional competency.
Compulsory literature:
Barth, Frederik (1998): Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference.
Prospect Heights/Illinois. Introduction.
Berger, Brigitte; Peter L. Berger and Hansfried Kellner (1973): The homeless mind. Modernization and
Consciousness. New York: Random House, Inc. Part 1, Chapter 3.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984): Distinctions. A social critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 2. Part Chapter 2: (A three-dimensional space), and Chapter 3)
Elias, Norbert and Scotson, John L. (1965): The Established and the Outsiders. A Sociological Enquiry into
Community Problems. London. Introduction (Theory of Established-Outsider-Relationships)
Erikson, Erik H. (1959): Identity and the Life Cycle. Chapter 3.
Fischer, Michael M.J. (1986): “Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory“ In: Clifford, J. and
Marcus, G.E. (eds.): Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of
California Press. 194-233.
Gellner, Ernest (1983): Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. Chapter 1-4.
Goffman, Erving (1963): Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice
Hall. Chapter 1.
Park, Robert E. (1928): Human Migration and the Marginal Man. American Journal of Sociology 33.
Said, E. (1979): Orientalism, New York:Vintage Books. 1-28.
Sollors, Werner (1986): Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York: Oxford
University Press. Chapter 7 (208-236).
Recommended literature (additional, non-compulsory):
Appadurai, Arjun (1997): Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press. Chapter 1 (1-23).
Baumann, Gerd and Thijil Sunier (1995): De-essentializing ethnicity. In: Gerd Baumann and Thijil Sunier
(eds.): Post-migration ethnicity. De-essentializing cohesion, commitments, and comparison. Amsterdam:
Het Spinhuis. 1-7.
Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann (1967): The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday
& Company. Part 3, Chapters 3 and 4.
Clifford, James (1997): Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge_
Harvard University Press. Chapters 4, 10, 11.
Gilroy, Paul (1993): The Black Atlantic – Double Consciousness and Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. Chapter 1 (1-40).
Huntington, Samual.P. (1993): The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72, 22-49.
Kuper, Adam (1999): Culture: The Anthropologists Account. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1-20,
226-247.
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1944): A Scientific Theory of Culture. Chapel Hill. Chapter 4 (What is Culture?)
Ortner, Shery B. (1984): Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties. In: Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley and
Sherry B. Ortner (eds.): Culture / power / history: a reader in contemporary social theory. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Sen, Amartya (2006): Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. New York/London: W.W. Norton
&Company. Chapter 2+3.
Simmel, Georg (1983/1986): “Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur”. In: .Philosophische Kultur. Berlin:
Wagenbach. 195-219.
Sollors, Werner (1989): The Invention of Ethnicity. In: Werner Sollors (ed.): The Invention of Ethnicity.
New York: Oxford University Press. Introduction.
Strauss, Anselm (1959): Mirrors and Masks. New York (extracts)
Taylor, Charles (1992): Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Todorova, Maria (1997): Imagining the Balkans. New York: Oxford University Press.140-160.
Instructor: dr.sc. Caroline Hornstein Tomić, Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar