Call for Papers

In recent years, social tensions linked to national, religious and ethnic identities have made the headlines in many countries, often linked to migration, as this “other globalization” (Wolton, 2003) brings the not-so-exotic “Other” ever closer in our cosmopolitan societies. For decades now, scholars have denounced the way in which the notion of culture has been exploited and misused in the public sphere, in support of various causes grounded in majority or minority identity discourse, by various groups defending or promoting national/nationalist, regional/regionalist, postcolonial, religious or other agendas, and resorting to “culture speak” (Hannerz, 1999). However, despite repeated warnings against rigid and “essentialised” uses of the concept of culture, these same social discourses and the identity phenomena motivating them seem to resist and even to grow stronger.