Culture does not divide into one coherent culture per community

Evidence

It is not a denial of culture to insist that “the social world [does not] divide up neatly into distinct particular cultures, one to every community, [nor] that what everyone needs is just one of those entities—a single, coherent culture—to give shape and meaning to … life” (Waldron 1992, emphasis in original). We often operate with too simplistic a conception of “belonging.” Sometimes we are most “spoken” by our attachments when we struggle to be free of them, quarrel with, criticize, or dissent radically from them. Like parental relationships, cultural traditions shape us both when they nurture and sustain us and when we have to break irrevocably with them in order to survive. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 369

Categorization

• XREF: This critique of the one-culture-per-community assumption and of ‘belonging’ is foundational scaffolding for how Islamophobia readings will treat cultural essentialism and the construction of the ‘Other’. — connects to: Culture in Relation divides and specifies without claiming primordial status — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 814; Cultures cannot be isolated or defined but only change through contact — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 828; Multicultural practices do not erase allegiance to an encompassing cultural group. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 931 (+1 more)