Cultural Identity

This article by Keenan Malik (from Butterflies and Wheels via ALDaily) challenges some of the attitudes attributed to cultural preservationists and comes close to, without quite making explicit, the essentially organic nature of cultures and their interactions. What he misses I think is the question of whether and how to mitigate the adverse effects on individuals of transfer between cultural contexts (either involuntary or voluntary) and of the phenomena of cultural blending and, yes, decay. Also relevant but ignored is the fact that one individual may be a member of several distinct cultures.

Perhaps I would have written a book on this if my attention span had not been depleted by exposure to the internet.

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