Culture and Identity

One of my favourite and most useful books out of the books I have read specifically about culture is Culture and Identity by Warren Kidd. The book provides a solid base of the concepts that are essential for an understanding of culture and identity.

The areas I found most useful and interesting touched on how culture and identity have informed and continue to shape high, low and popular culture, class culture and media influence.

This book is useful towards my topic as a persons identity is shaped by their culture, so as a designer it is important to know this when working for other people. Also because art and design is a big part of culture and identity, art is one of the factors that shapes a culture as well as other factors such as religious beliefs, language, traditions, rituals and more.

Selection of notes and quotes from book:

-Page 28: 'Culture and identity have been key issues in sociology since its inception. They allow sociologists to discuss who we think we are and how we behave as individuals and groups.

-Page 23: Section:choosing between cultures
'One might believe that there are absolute standards of taste and that some values are better than others... some cultures and subcultures are better or more advanced than others because they are based on higher standards...’

Page 26

-What is culture:
“ ‘The way of life of a group of people’ in other’ in other words, how they live their lives”

-It’s important as a designer to consider culture and have knowledge of different cultures, not only so that we can design things appropriate for the specific culture, but also because art and design is one of the key elements that shapes a culture and represents a different way of life. ‘The way of life of a group, its culture, is the product of a massive social undertaking: the result of the collective, combined and interrelated efforts of all its members’ (page 9).

-A designer needs to know cultures as much as a culture needs art in order to be culture.

Page 9

-Page 10: ‘Culture creates the world we live in’...Page 11: 'Cultures exist both subjectively and objectively...they shape styles of dress, food, art, music and so on; and they are subjective because they are concerned with individuals' interpretations'

-When discussing the future of culture and design and the importance of keeping up with cultural design trends as a designer…’societal evolution can be divided into five key stages, through which all cultures will travel’ (page 56)