Hem till Europa. Platser för identitet och handling

Abstract

Home to Europe There is a main line in contemporary ethnological research which is inspired by sociological and social psychological theory concerning modernity and cultural identity. For a decade or so this has inspired analyses of how people construct an individual self-identity and a group cultural identity with a free relation to tradition and obligatory bonds. What appears particularly problematic about theories of modernity is that they tend to overemphasize people as interpreting and meaning-handling beings and do not take action and practice seriously enough. This leads to an understanding of cultural identity as the result of reflection (reflexivity) more than as the consequence of what people actually do. In many ways this view conceals the local and regional processes now taking place all around Europe. People’s growing interest in place forces us to question several accepted truths about the excluding and xenophobic nature of the local. The local as it appears today seems to derive its force not just from globalization processes but also from its inviting ”doability”. The article ends by indicating possible directions for future studies, but it starts in a highly concrete fashion, with an example of how the habit of transforming people into cultural stereotypes – identities – has taken on the character of self-evident fact in today’s turbulent Europe.