Ethnicity, Culture, Identity
Allen Chun
Abstract : This is a one term research seminar that aims in the first instance to examine the history and conceptual nuances of person, race, ethnicity, culture and identification as a framework for assessing their relevance and usage to the ongoing theoretical literature in cultural studies and social sciences. In adopting a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary perspective, I will examine the ramifications of developing a subjective and politically critical approach that emphasizes the formative influences of colonialism, nationalism and globalization in the making of contemporary cultural identities. The implications for post-colonial, transnational and postmodern negotiations of various genres will in turn lead to a more systematic discussion of cultural hybridity, diasporic resistance and the politics of difference. This constitutes the first 2/3 of the course. The remaining 1/3 will be devoted to an intensive scrutiny of case studies, which will hopefully provide a concrete foundation for proposing individual research papers. Course assessment will be based predominantly on the writing of a research paper and to a lesser extent on oral participation in class discussion. Students will be expected to present their research proposal orally on the final day of class, before formally engaging in the project.
1. The Person (Subject) in Culture and Cultural Studies
*Rose, Nicholas, 1996, “Identity, Genealogy, History”, in Questions of Cultural Identity , eds.
S. Hall and P. du Gay, London: Sage, pp. 128-50.
*Grossberg, Lawrence, 1996, “Identity and Cultural Studies: Is That All There Is?” in
Questions of Cultural Identity , eds. S. Hall and P. du Gay, London: Sage, pp. 87-107.
+Handler, Richard, 1994, Is ‘Identity’ a Useful Cross-Cultural Concept?, in
Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity , ed. J. Gillis, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, pp. 27-40.
+Alcoff, Linda, 1988, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in
Feminist Theory”,
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 13(3): 405-36.
Sarup, Maran, 1996, Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World , Athens: University of
Georgia Press, Chapter 1.
Butler, Judith, 1990, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity , Berkeley:
University of California Press, Chapter 1.
2. From Race to Ethnicity
*Burrow, John W., 1966, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory ,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 1.
*Sollors, Werner, 1989, Introduction, in The Invention of Ethnicity , ed. W. Sollors, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
+Hirschfield, Lawrence A., 1996, Introduction, in Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture and the Child’s Construction of Human Kinds , Cambridge: MIT Press.
+Gould, Stephen Jay, 1996, The Mismeasure of Man , 2 nd
edition, New York: W.W. Norton and Co., Chapter 2.
Mauss, Marcel, 1985, A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person; The Notion of
Self [1938], in The Category of the Person , eds. M. Carrithers et al, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-25.
Stocking, George W, 1968, The Dark-Skinned Savage: The Image of Primitive Man in
Evolutionary Anthropology, in Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of
Anthropology , New York: Free Press, pp. 110-32.

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3. Ethnicity as Phenomenon and Concept
*Barth, Frederik, 1969, Introduction, in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social
Organization of Culture Difference , Boston: Little, Brown.
*Brubaker, Rogers, 2004, Ethnicity without Groups , Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
Chapter 1.
+Geertz, Clifford, 1963, The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States, in Old Societies and New States , ed. C. Geertz, Chicago: Aldine, pp.
105-55.
+Heusch, Luc de, 2000, L’Ethnie : The Vicissitudes of a Concept, Social Anthropology 8(2):
99-115.
Brubaker, Rogers, 2004, Beyond Identity, in Ethnicity without Groups , Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, Chapter 2.
Sollors, Werner, 1996, Foreword, in Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader , New York:
New York University Press.
4. Identity and Identity Crisis
*Gleason, Philip, 1983, Identifying Identity: A Semantic History, The Journal of American
History 69(4): 910-31 (reprinted in Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader , pp.460-87).
*Erikson, Erik, 1950, Childhood and Society , New York: W.W. Norton and Co., Chapter 8.
+Bendle, Mervyn F., 2002, The Crisis of ‘Identity’ in High Modernity, British Journal of
Sociology 53(1): 1-18.
+Giddens, Anthony, 1994, Modernity and Self-Identity , Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 70-98.
Baumeister, Richard, 1986, Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self , New York:
Oxford University Press, Chapters 1-2.
Kumar, Krishnan, 2006, English and French National Identity: Comparisons and Contrasts,
Nations and Nationalism 12(1): 413-32.
5. Nationalism and Cultural Identity
*Gellner, Ernest, 1983, Nations and Nationalism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Chapters 1-4.
*Fox, Richard G. ed. 1990, Introduction, in Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of
National Cultures , Washington DC: American Anthropological Association.
+Torpey, John, 2000, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State ,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 1.
+Peters, Bernhard, 2002, A New Look at ‘National Identity’: How should we think about
‘collective’ or national identities’? Are there two types of national identities? Does
Germany have an ethnic identity, and is it different?, Archives Européenes de Sociologie
43(1): 3-32.
James, Paul, 1997, The Nation as an Abstract Community, in Nation Formation , London:
Sage, Chapter 1.
Herzfeld, Michael, 1997, Of Definitions and Boundaries: The Status of Culture in the Culture of the State, in Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation State , Chapter 2.
6. Ethnic Conflict in National and Colonial Context
*Banton, Michael, 2000, Ethnic Conflict, Sociology 34: 481-98.
*Kapferer, Bruce, 2001, Ethnic Nationalism and the Discourses of Violence in Sri Lanka,
Communal/Plural: Journal of Transnational Crosscultural Studies 9(1): 33-68.
+Fenton, Steve, 2004, Beyond Ethnicity: The Global Comparative Analysis of Ethnic
Conflict, International Journal of Comparative Sociology 45(3-4): 179-94.

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+Ruane, Joseph and Jennifer Todd, 2005, The Roots of Intense Ethnic Conflict may not in fact be Ethnic: Categories, Communities and Path Dependence, Archives Européenes de
Sociologie 45(2): 209-32.
Cohn, Bernard S., 1984, The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia, Folk
26: 25-49.
James, Paul, 2001, Relating Global Tensions: Modern Tribalism and Postmodern
Nationalism, Communal/Plural: Journal of Transnational Crosscultural Studies 9(1):
11-32.
7. Hybridity and Diaspora
*Bhabha, Homi K., 1996, Culture’s In-Between, in Questions of Identity , eds. S. Hall and P. du Gay, London: Sage, pp. 53-60.
*Gilroy, Paul, 1997, Diaspora and the Detours of Identity, in Identity and Difference , ed. K.
Woodward, London: Sage, pp. 299-343.
+Hall, Stuart, 1990, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, in Identity, Community, Culture,
Difference , ed. J. Rutherford, London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 222-37.
+Bauman, Zygmunt, Identity in the Globalizing World, in Identity, Culture, and
Globalization , eds. E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg, Leiden: Brill, pp. 471-82.
Friedman, Jonathan, 1994, Cultural Identity and Global Process , London: Sage, Chapter 7.
McMaster, Gerald R., 1995, Border Zones: The 'Injun-uity' of Aesthetic Tricks. Cultural Studies
9(1): 74-90.
8. Post-Colonial Subjectivities
*Dirlik, Arif, 1994, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global
Capitalism, Critical Inquiry 20: 328-56.
*Mishra, Vijay and Bob Hodges, 1991, What is Post(-)colonialism?, Textual Practice 5(3):
399-414 (reprinted in Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory , pp. 276-90).
+Rata, Elizabeth, 2001, The Indigenization of Ethnicity, in Places and Politics in an Age of
Globalization , Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 167-89.
+Ahmad, Aijaz, 1992, Orientalism and After, in In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures ,
London: Verso, pp. 159-220.
Young, Robert J.C., 1995, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race , London:
Routledge, Chapter 7.
Spivak, Gayatri, 1993, The Burden of English, in Orientalism and the Postcolonial
Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia , eds. C.A. Breckinridge and P. van der Meer,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 134-57.
9. Who are
“We”?
*Chun, Allen, 1996, Fuck Chineseness: On the Ambiguities of Ethnicity as Culture as
Identity, boundary 2 23(2): 111-38.
*Chun, Allen, 1996, Discourses of Identity in the Changing Spaces of Public Culture in
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, Theory Culture & Society 13(1): 51-75.
+Ong, Aihwa, 1997, Chinese Modernities: Narratives of Nation and Capitalism, in
Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism , eds.
A. Ong and D.M. Nonini, London: Routledge, pp. 171-99.
+Ang, Ien, 1994, On Not Speaking Chinese: Postmodern Ethnicity and the Politics of
Diaspora, New Formations 24: 1-18.
Chun, Allen, 1995, An Oriental Orientalism: The Paradox of Tradition and Modernity in
Nationalist Taiwan, History and Anthropology 9(1): 27-56.
Chun, Allen, 2009, On the Geopolitics of Identity, Anthropological Theory 9(3).

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10. Singapore Race and Ethnicity in Context
*Benjamin, Geoffrey, 1976, The Cultural Logic of Singapore’s “Multiculturalism”, in
Singapore: Society in Transition , ed. Riaz Hassan, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University
Press, pp. 115-33.
*Clammer, John, 1998, Managing the Multiethnic State: Ethnicity, Classifications and the
Power to Name in the Construction of Singaporean Society “Reality”, in Race and State in Independent Singapore, 1965-1990: The Cultural Politics of Pluralism in a Multiethnic
Society , Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 1-26.
+Chua, Beng Huat, 2003, Multiculturalism in Singapore: An Instrument of Social Control,
Race and Class 44: 58-77.
+Purushotam, Nirmala, 1998, Disciplining Differences: “Race” in Singapore, in Southeast
Asian Identities: Culture and the Politics of Representation in Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore and Thailand , ed. J.S. Kahn, Singapore: ISEAS, pp. 51-94.
Rahim, Lily Zubaidah, 1998, Perceptions of the Malay Marginality, in The Singapore
Dilemma: The Political and Educational Marginality of the Malay Community , Kuala
Lumpur: Oxford University Press, pp. 49-64.
Velayutham, Selvaraj, 2009, Everyday Racism in Singapore, in Everyday Multiculturalism , ed. A. Wise and S. Velayutham, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 255-73.
11. Case Study: The Pragmatics of Identity
*Obama, Barack, 1995, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance .
12. Case Study: The Mirror of Modernity
*Bayart, Jean-Francois, 2005 [1996], The Illusion of Cultural Identity , Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
13. Case Study: The
“Identity” in Indigenous Psychology
*Kim, Uichol and John W. Berry, 1993, Indigenous Psychologies: Experience and Research in Cultural Context . Newbury Park: Sage.
14. Case Study: Identity as Historical and Discursive Construct
*Bynum, Caroline Walker, 2005, Metamorphosis and Identity , New York: Zone Books.
Course Requirements:
In short, a research paper of 7500-10000 words. Class participation not part of final marks.