What is cultural identity to a young adult? Navigating multiple identities as a young person.

Identity and culture always go hand-in-hand, was very clear during my graduation research on understanding what makes intangible cultural heritage relevant (ICH, here onward) to young people. As I interpreted and made sense of the connections of the various themes that emerged in the generative workshops I conducted, an understanding about identity and how it is experienced by the young adults in relation to their heritage became clear. I created a framework to illustrate my analysis pointing towards the relationship between ICH and identity. The version of the framework presented below emerged through iterations based on my conversations with research participants and gathering their perspective.

What's identity to a young adult?

Identity explained by Howard (2000) is how one “locates themself” in a social context. Identity and its relation to heritage can be perceived very differently in a globalized context, mainly because earlier “societies were more stable, identity was to a great extent assigned, rather than selected or adopted” (Howard, 2000). Today social influences from their peers and media nudges young adults to know themselves better while meeting the demands of constant fast paced changes around them.

The youth between 18-30 years is constantly constructing their identity as they are transitioning from teenage to young adulthood (Arnett, 2000; Benson & Elder Jr, 2011; Erikson, 1968). As they are in the life making phase, building a sense of self helps them make autonomous decisions (Benson & Elder Jr, 2011) by choosing to shape their behaviour. This is also a time in the youth’s life when they are trying to feel secure with themselves, moving from dependence to self-reliance (Whitney-Thomas & Moloney, 2001).

Participants expressed that while finding their authentic identity, personal conflicts arise from the years of conditioning they were subjected to from childhood to adolescence. Many times this conditioning could be a result of the assigned or given identity (such as gender, ethnicity, language, nationality, etc), of which some reflect instances of intangible heritage. Therefore, personal identity development is the challenging part; it needs the know-how and interactions to help reflect on one's own development process. Getting started can be challenging too. How might one “locate themself” in a global social context?

Often, it can be too confronting to think about:

• How did I get here?

• Where do I want to go?

There could be multiple answers today as compared to the stable or linear answers our ancestors could once give. Here is where an identity crisis can happen.

Intention

This study and the framework intended to address the propagators' (of ICH such as cultural institutions) and custodians' dilemmas related to making context-specific or local ICH relevant to young adults who are global citizens and have a global identity.

Identity Framework

It is useful to understand how the youth is introduced to various identities right from their formative years, how it is layered as they grow up with new identity labels and where they place themselves today. The overview on a person’s identity is also intended to support the design of the new touchpoints in reconnecting the youth and their ICH.

This framework helps to visualize the various components, when put together, that construct a person’s current identity.

Historic Identity

Historic Identity makes up the identity one already has by birth, by family or by lineage. A child when born has no control over this identity. They start by merely and merrily replicating the family’s identity. One of the youth participants gives her example saying:

When I was younger than adolescent, I followed. First my mom chose for me, what I wore or what I did. Then when I grew a bit older, I started making these decisions myself (choosing my own piñata) but I was also subtly following what everyone was doing, what my favourite TV show had and other such things. That’s when I started to have a sense of who I am and what I want to portray about myself and what I liked. - Youth Participant, Mexico

Many times, historic identity is heavily influenced by what the family does and chooses as a whole. When reflecting on it, it seems imposed. Pointing out to examples of the given (or at times, imposed) identity labels were those that were intertwined with religion. Thus, substantial part of many discussions with the youth was a debate on religious connotations being intertwined with heritage.

It is worth recalling an observation that when a child comes across ICH stemming from their historic identity, many questions arise about the ICH. Extracting from another story of a participant, who as a young girl, often questioned, “Why is mom not allowed to touch the plants or make food every few days?” My interpretation is that ICH then makes sense in the child's mind when these questions are answered by the family member based on the need - is the child looking for an emotional, spiritual or intellectual answer to reason with their curiosity? The role of a living elder becomes crucial here. The elder senses the child’s need and provides an appropriate answer. The elder can also answer oncoming follow-up questions. When the reasoning is clear, the ICH expression seems sensible.

While the same ICH when looking back as an adult, needs to align with the personal values and belief systems of the person. Therefore, ICH served as a piece of a religious event or activity as a child, affected the adoption of the practice by the youth too. The belief system and faith of an individual were the deciding factors when living cultural practices intertwined with religion.

Community Identity

As the child grows up, new facets of identity start to come into play with the groups they become part of - relatives, friends. This identity reinforces that a person is part of a community, region or territory and sometimes the caste they are told they belong to.

A youth participant from China explained the story of how she realized she was part of a bigger whole (than her immediate family) after the local government urged its people to use the Henan dialect.

I cannot speak the Henan dialect although I was born here. I knew about it from when I was a child, but this knowledge about it was not passed generation to generation but by others around me. - Youth Participant, China

Here is where tensions can start to arise as one starts getting exposed to identity labels. The labels sometimes define what ICH is practiced by one versus another. Think of it as compartmentalization - putting someone in the confines of one category. When this categorization becomes evident, people

seek different behaviours than their immediate community. An example would be a teenager who wants to do different things than their parents to break free from the ICH that does not make sense to them or does not make them “cool” among their peers or the groups they belong to.

National Identity

On the way to adulthood, one also starts to realize that they are part of yet a bigger category that comes with their state, province, country or continent.

Here tensions or appreciation for being part of a collective identity surface. Terms related to race and nationality are used, such as “native”, “black”, “asian”, “Surinamese”, “latino”. The use of these identity labels typecast the person. What about a person who was born and raised in the Netherlands but the parents’ home country is India? Is this person Indian or Dutch? Selasi (Selasi, 2015) also addresses the “limiting traps that the language of coming from countries sets, the privileging of a fiction - the singular country, over reality: human experience” in her TED Talk ‘Don’t Ask Where I’m From, Ask Where I’m A Local’. She explains that a country becomes home because of the experiences a person has in various places.

Global Personal Identity

Where one is today is influenced by experiences in the historic, community and national identities in varying proportions. Global personal identity is where the current experiences and desires lie. It is a shape-shifting, amoeba-like identity where one chooses for themselves. It allows a person to leave behind what they don’t find relevant and integrate what they find interesting to make part of themselves. This adapting and transforming identity often gives an impression of the various identities a person is made up of.

Every person has a historic, community and national identities in different proportions based on their situations and experiences in life so far. Another aspect of this framework is that the proportions change as the person changes. For each person, this framework is authentic and dynamic to where they are now, from the vantage point of today. Borrowing from Yunkaporta’s metaphor of a kaleidoscope of identities

(Yunkaporta, 2020), these identities are always a part of us. It depends when and how you see the patterns in the interplay of imposed and chosen identities.

The youth is either resonating with ICH based on conditioning or is trying to uncondition themselves as they discover their personal belief systems. According to me, finding instances of ICH relevant is tied with the alignment of the living heritage with their personal values and belief systems.

Limitations of the framework

The framework comes with the limitation that it does not consider all realities in this project. For example, it does not account for those who have disturbed situations - refugees, second generation immigrants or those who kept moving through their lives, estranged from their roots. Even though the identity framework would be useful to them too, the research participants were not representative of those with disturbed or displaced backgrounds. Having said that, the framework either needs to be validated with them or new research should be conducted to consider their connections with ICH.