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Constructive Approaches to Law, Culture, and Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Carol J. Greenhouse
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Extract

This commentary responds to the essays by Espeland and Gooding as ethnographic studies of the cultural construction of identity with a discussion of the concept of “cultural construction.” Sophocles' Antigone provides an extended illustrative example of how the poetics of identity are tied to the materiality of power. In the world of events, the concept of cultural construction is useful—as Espeland's and Gooding's essays show—as an alternative (and remedy) for the overuse of the concept of “choice.” To refer to identities as “cultural constructions” focuses attention on how powerful institutions and subjectivities are mutually implicated, without implying that people's needs and world-views are commensurable—or that the outcomes of their contests are fated.

Type
Commentary
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 28 , Issue 5: Symposium: Community and Identity in Sociolegal Studies , 1994 , pp. 1231 - 1241
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

For constructive dialogues on the subject of Ismene and Antigone over the years, my thanks to Fred Arnan, David Engel, Frank Munger, Austin Sarat, Barbara Yngvesson and, especially in the present context, Elizabeth Mertz.

References

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