JS-38
The Power of Heritage:Encountering Differences and Marking Identities
RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture
Language: English
Aware of the increasing interest in the movement of policies between places, sites and settings, this JS aims to show how people learn to live with “difference”, one of the most challenging issues of the contemporary society. How people of different heritages being in a common space (coexistence due to migration, refugee problem and globalization) could forge some kind of shared sensibility? How could it be possible to realize some kind of common life together, without retreating into “war tribes” one against the other, but being able to understand and live together (peacefully).
We suggest to focus on contemporary cities, the contact zones of globalizing, urbanizing, super diverse world. One good example could be some field research on the “border zones” of Europe (Spain, Italy and Greece) where the refugee problem reveals some of the most urgent problems nowadays: who is the emblematic “other” for the contemporary (Western?) culture? Because the “identity” problem is central for communication and characterizes the communicational system of a society, these issues become central for the analysis of communication, knowledge and culture. In these zones is “played” the game between identities (describing “otherness” and the ways to deal with it): expressing merged identities is a capital problem apparently in these zones (unfortunately creating social violence and conflict) but we argue that it is an ideal topic to investigate the contemporary postmodern culture: we invite papers on analyses of facts and or propositions on eventually constructing new social Heritages (and Identities).
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