Be Prestige-Resilient! A Contextual Ethics of Cultural Identity

This article proposes a new social- and moral-psychological understanding of cultural identity, tailored to the mixed multicultural contexts of every major city today. Seeking to protect vulnerable cultural groups, theories of multiculturalism have insufficiently assessed the psychological significa...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Van Den Berg, Paul (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2004
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2004, Volume: 7, Issue: 2, Pages: 197-214
Further subjects:B Multiculturalism
B underclass
B Ethics
B Oscar Lewis
B Prestige
B Social Psychology
B Identity
B Will Kymlicka
B Moral Psychology
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:This article proposes a new social- and moral-psychological understanding of cultural identity, tailored to the mixed multicultural contexts of every major city today. Seeking to protect vulnerable cultural groups, theories of multiculturalism have insufficiently assessed the psychological significance of intercultural social comparison, in identity-formation. While plays of prestige are a fact of life for immigrant and gay minorities, not everyone is equally able to cope with ascribed negative prestige. This is shown in an analysis of reactive attitudes towards negative prestige under contrasting conditions (of rough cultural equality, and in underclass-culture). The idea of prestige-resilience is proposed both as an explanatory concept in the debate on underclass-culture and as a normative concept from which basic moral and ethical thresholds for cultural identity-formation might be deduced. Outcomes are considered relevant for psychological analysis of underclass-formation and for multicultural policy-making, specifically in immigrant states.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1023/B:ETTA.0000032755.01672.7e