Supporting cultural identity and common historical narratives via digital library tools – a humble proposal
Szabolcs Dancs
Constructing cultural identity is of high importance in libraries according to various IFLA and UNESCO declarations, but how does it influence our daily activities? And what does the concept ‘cultural identity’ cover at all?
As Stuart Hall states in one of his articles: “identities are constructed through, not outside, difference. This entails the radically disturbing recognition that it is only through the relation to the Other, the relation to what it is not [...] that the 'positive' meaning of any term - and thus its 'identity' - can be constructed”. In my presentation I use a very similar, structuralist approach. As it is suggested by Ferdinand de Saussure, linguistic units (such as words) gain their value or meaning through binary oppositions. In the same way: people tend to define themselves against other individuals. So do communities.
One might suppose that all identities have an aggression element. It is far from being necessarily so. Cultural identity should be regarded as something complex, dynamical, a thing that changes in time. It can also be seen as a set of attributes traditionally linked to a community, something that occurs in TV commercials built upon (quite simplified) stereotypes, but identity could be very sophisticated as well depending on the quantity and quality of information one happened to acquire through his or her socialisation.
There is no doubt that complex individual identities have a collective part too, it consists of a set of values shared among the members of the society and considered to be the basis of cultural belonging. What we need is to define the golden means between two aspects: the one regarding cultural identity as something very typical and (mainly or exclusively) roots in tradition and history, and the other for which cultural identity does not bear any importance at all.
It is a key issue if we can keep our humanity when meeting people of different background. Cultural identity plays here a role not to be underestimated. As it was phrased by Vilmos Csányi: “Humans possess all the necessary biological tools to keep in check aggression within the community they regard as their own. At the same time, there are practically no biological checks on aggression against groups regarded as foreign. What they do have is cultural checks, provided these have been acquired through individual development and socialization.”
Constructing identity based on common cultural references and consciousness of values is not just crucial but it is the only intellectual, European response to the events (such as terror attacks) appealing to our darkest inclinations and aiming to divide our community. Libraries, encouraged by IFLA and UNESCO documents, need to find ways and methods to implement in order to support constructing cultural identity and foster intercultural dialogue. As for V4 countries, projects could be designed and run to create a commonly accessible digital corpus processed via using cooperatively built metadata sources (namespaces, authority databases, multilingual thesauri). Developing a complex methodology to create common historical narratives exploiting digital tools also could be a field for collaboration.
National Széchényi Library in Budapest, HU
[email protected]
Constructing cultural identity is of high importance in libraries according to various IFLA and UNESCO declarations, but how does it influence our daily activities? And what does the concept ‘cultural identity’ cover at all?
As Stuart Hall states in one of his articles: “identities are constructed through, not outside, difference. This entails the radically disturbing recognition that it is only through the relation to the Other, the relation to what it is not [...] that the 'positive' meaning of any term - and thus its 'identity' - can be constructed”. In my presentation I use a very similar, structuralist approach. As it is suggested by Ferdinand de Saussure, linguistic units (such as words) gain their value or meaning through binary oppositions. In the same way: people tend to define themselves against other individuals. So do communities.
One might suppose that all identities have an aggression element. It is far from being necessarily so. Cultural identity should be regarded as something complex, dynamical, a thing that changes in time. It can also be seen as a set of attributes traditionally linked to a community, something that occurs in TV commercials built upon (quite simplified) stereotypes, but identity could be very sophisticated as well depending on the quantity and quality of information one happened to acquire through his or her socialisation.
There is no doubt that complex individual identities have a collective part too, it consists of a set of values shared among the members of the society and considered to be the basis of cultural belonging. What we need is to define the golden means between two aspects: the one regarding cultural identity as something very typical and (mainly or exclusively) roots in tradition and history, and the other for which cultural identity does not bear any importance at all.
It is a key issue if we can keep our humanity when meeting people of different background. Cultural identity plays here a role not to be underestimated. As it was phrased by Vilmos Csányi: “Humans possess all the necessary biological tools to keep in check aggression within the community they regard as their own. At the same time, there are practically no biological checks on aggression against groups regarded as foreign. What they do have is cultural checks, provided these have been acquired through individual development and socialization.”
Constructing identity based on common cultural references and consciousness of values is not just crucial but it is the only intellectual, European response to the events (such as terror attacks) appealing to our darkest inclinations and aiming to divide our community. Libraries, encouraged by IFLA and UNESCO documents, need to find ways and methods to implement in order to support constructing cultural identity and foster intercultural dialogue. As for V4 countries, projects could be designed and run to create a commonly accessible digital corpus processed via using cooperatively built metadata sources (namespaces, authority databases, multilingual thesauri). Developing a complex methodology to create common historical narratives exploiting digital tools also could be a field for collaboration.
National Széchényi Library in Budapest, HU
[email protected]