Culture and Identities

The course aims to study the formation of the concept of culture, its importance, scope and limits. It will emphasize the relations between culture and identity in conceptual terms and also as social processes. It will address how it can be (or not) used for the understanding of contemporary processes, both regarding ethnicity and urban social processes, through the emergence and redefinition of difference. Cultural encounters will be thought from the perspective of ethnic and social relations at the local level and also at a more comprehensive level, whether national or international. Particular emphasis will be given to the relations of culture to identity and also in specific places, through case studies, urban and ethnic.