IB Philosophy 1.1.3 Cultural Identity Notes

Culture and the Formation of Identity

1. As discussed in 1.1.1, personal identity concerns what makes each of us the particular individual we are, while 1.1.2 examined whether identity persists over time. Cultural identity shifts the focus from the individual in isolation to the individual as shaped by the communities, traditions, and meaning-systems in which they are embedded.
2. Charles Taylor, in The Ethics of Authenticity, argues that identity is fundamentally dialogical, formed not in isolation but through ongoing exchanges with others. We define ourselves against a horizon of meaning (context) provided by our culture: the languages, moral frameworks, and shared narratives that make our choices intelligible.
3. Consider a person deciding whether to become a doctor or an artist. That choice only makes sense against a cultural background that values both medicine and creative expression in specific ways.
4. Without such a horizon, Taylor argues, the very idea of an 'authentic choice' collapses into arbitrariness.
5. Taylor's position challenges atomistic conceptions of the self: the idea that each person is a fully self-contained unit whose identity comes entirely from within.
   1. His critique of atomism argues that even our deepest personal convictions only make sense against a cultural background that supplies the categories and values through which we understand ourselves.
6. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus captures how culture becomes part of who we are at a bodily level.
   1. Habitus refers to deeply ingrained habits, preferences, and ways of seeing the world that we absorb through upbringing. They feel personal and natural, yet Bourdieu argues they are socially produced.
   2. A person raised in an upper-middle-class household may develop a 'natural' preference for classical music, understated clothing, and formal dining, while experiencing fast food and popular entertainment as vulgar.
   3. These preferences feel like authentic expressions of who they are, yet Bourdieu argues they are products of class-specific cultural conditioning.
7. Frantz Fanon, in Black Skin, White Masks, demonstrates how colonial culture can shape and distort identity.
   1. Fanon describes the experience of a Black man walking through a French city and hearing a child say, 'Look, a Negro!'
   2. In that moment, the man's identity is fixed from outside: he is made to see himself through the coloniser's gaze, experiencing what Fanon calls psychic alienation, the internalisation (internal acceptance) of a lesser self-worth which is defined by the dominant society.
8. Fanon's analysis shows that cultural identity is not always a matter of free choice. It can be imposed through power structures (economic dominance, educational systems, and media) that privilege one cultural framework over others, raising the question of whether an identity formed under cultural domination is truly one's own.

Habitus, Fanon, and Cultural Power

1. A person raised in an upper-middle-class household acquires specific tastes in food, music, and manners that feel entirely personal yet are socially produced through habitus.
2. Bourdieu's insight is that cultural identity operates below conscious choice: these dispositions shape not just what we prefer, but also how we perceive the world, making social inequality feel natural rather than constructed.
3. The concept of socialisation is central here.
   1. From birth, individuals are immersed in cultural environments that transmit values, beliefs, and behavioural norms through family, education, religion, and peer groups.
   2. This process shapes not only what we believe but how we perceive the world. Our cognitive and emotional frameworks are culturally conditioned.
4. Kwame Anthony Appiah, in The Ethics of Identity, offers a more nuanced view: cultural identities are scripts, socially available narratives that individuals can adopt, modify, or resist. A second-generation immigrant, for instance, may inherit a cultural script about family loyalty and career expectations but creatively renegotiate it, blending elements of their parents' tradition with values from their new context.
5. Appiah argues that ethical individuality lies precisely in this capacity to engage critically and creatively with inherited scripts rather than either passively accepting or wholly rejecting them.
6. The question of cultural identity thus connects to broader concerns within Being Human: the nature of the self, the role of others in constituting who we are, and the limits of individual freedom. These themes recur in the discussion of social conditioning (1.6.2) and gender and identity (8.3.2).

Can False Beliefs Be Part of Our Identity?