Repositioning the discussion on culture and cultural studies

Abstract

Why is it important to revisit the concept of culture and cultural studies? Today we find everywhere many meanings of cultures speaking in plural. Culture is blurring and its study has fallen into epistemological disorder. The interest of this article is to offer a critical look at the uses of culture. Culture cannot be dissociated from the nation-state and this turns out to be an institution with a complex trajectory because it has had to first confront, and then negotiate with, the vitality of ethnicities. Ethnicity and culture have shared features, but in opposition and mean different fields of operation. To carry out this critical look, the article is divided into three parts. The first refers to the cultural industries and artifacts coined by the schools of Frankfurt and Great Britain; the second, to the emergence of a new paradigm based on the policies of recognition that the nation-states have initiated since the last decades of the twentieth century; finally, we will Re-visit the concept of identities that is indispensable to the approach of cultures in the nation-states of the global era.