If so much of present day cultural learning depends on situation and context how do the resulting assemblages acquire an organised coherence? One way this issue is being raised in recent anthropology is through the concern with identity, whether defined as identity of the person of an ethnic group or of an entire nation. But identities do not swim above in the stream of social life like amoebas in fermenting banana soup. If definitions of identity involve a characterization of attributes and a drawing of boundaries around the units so defined, in contrast with other units, this must have a causal context. Moreover, we know that the search for identity varies historically, intensifying or slackening over periods of time. Thus, a major rise occurred in the demand for identity with the advent of the nation-state and the collateral development of nationalism, which hoped to create a unified and identifiable 'people', out of diverse populations with distinctive identities of their own. Recently, the demand for identities has risen once again. precisely at a time when cultural repertoires are becoming again more heterogeneous, as people have responded to changes in the social division of labour, in their relation to governments, in reaction to new modes of communication. These repertoires of cultural understandings and practices do not easily fit any traditional notion of culture as an integral and integrated set of forms and meanings.
What is the focal issue in the present day cultural learning?
