I have always been very passionate about understanding what makes us different and how external factors contribute to who we are becoming. So feel free to scroll through articles related to culture, language, identity, social interaction, symbols and meanings, and much more.
Reflections on identity – essay
Throughout history, regarding the issue of identity, two major opinions have been noted. The first refers to identity as an inherent construct in the human being yet to be discovered. The second argues that identity is formed and it is constantly redefined by interacting with the Other and depends on the context (Hall 1992, cited by Lawrence Grossberg, 2003). This essay is built on the second perspective.
Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection – book review
Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connections is a work with an ambitious goal. It analyzes the particular forms of culture that rise at the intersection between universal requirements and local specificities. Building on how forest exploitation evolved in Indonesia during 1970-1990 and how the actors involved interacted, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing aims to demonstrate that…
Camino de Santiago. Between Pilgrimage and Tourism – dissertation paper (Romanian version)
The present study aimed to explore some of the topics that accompany the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage today, such as: the motivations of contemporary pilgrims to make the journey, how the pilgrimage is experienced during the journey, the communitas, and the role of the pilgrimage in the lives of the subjects. Also, starting from the religious origin of this pilgrimage and taking into account its subsequent developments of touristic nature, I tried to explore the identity of the pilgrim nowadays and its significance for the interviewees, but also the way that the pilgrimage-tourism dichotomy was experienced. Building on Turner and Turner’s idea of communitas, challenged by Eade and Sallnow, the results of the study mainly support the perspectives of Coleman and Reader who describe the pilgrimage both as a place of manifestation of the communitas and as a potential for competition and conflict. Regarding the motivations of the pilgrims, the aspects related to religious devotion have been replaced by a rather spiritual or personal development perspective. The pilgrimage was experienced as a transformative experience in the lives of the subjects, and the contributing factors were the interconnection between the elements of pilgrimage in the traditional religious sense and the playful spirit, fun and comfort associated with tourism. On the other hand, the touristic aspects, the comfort and the new-found motivations lead to a redefinition of the meaning of pilgrim.
All economies are embedded – essay
The idea of embedded economy was first mentioned by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation (1944) to refer to the fact that, in the “natural” state, economic actions are regulated by non-economic institutions, such as life, social or kinship relations. Drawing on the anthropological and historical discoveries of the period about pre-capitalist societies…
Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood – book review
Originally conceived as a graduation paper, the trigger for Jay MacLeod’s research was to discover why Achievement Ideology did not seem to be embraced by an 11-year-old child from Clarendon Heights, a low-income social housing neighborhood. His aspirations contradicted the American dream, according to which anyone can become president.
Adina Grigoroiu 