The Relationship between National Identity and Cultural Objects (Annotated Bibliography Sample)

The Relationship between National Identity and Cultural Objects
Annotated Bibliography
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The Relationship between National Identity and Cultural Objects
RESEARCH TOPIC: The relationship between national identity and cultural objects (For example the Paris Eiffel Tower, the sculpture of Christ towering over Rio de Janeiro Sydney Harbour Bridge, etc).
Category: Primary source- book
BACA, M. (2006) Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images. New York, NY: American Library Association.

1. This book defines cultural objects and discusses in detail the importance of preserving cultural work and images.
2. Cultural objects include intellectual architectural works and all artistic creations made by humans.
3. Cultural objects have an aesthetic value and usually serve a practical purpose in the society.
4. There are many forms of cultural objects including sculptures, artefacts, paintings, drawings, buildings, and other forms of visual art.
5. Cultural objects construct the identity of the people and should be catalogued and stored in repositories such as libraries.

This source is very useful in exploring the relationship between cultural objects because it
presents a good definition of cultural objects and the different forms.

Category: Primary source- book
BARKAN, E., & BUSH, R. (2002) Claiming the Stones/ Naming the Bones: Cultural Property and the Negotiation of National and Ethnic Identity. New York, NY: Getty Publications.

1. This aptly titled book explores the interplay between national identity and cultural property.
2. The author conceptualizes cultural objects and products such as art, literature, music, and monuments as ‘cultural property”.
3. The author argues that cultural property, including tangible and intangible cultural objects, creates a profound sense of identity and belonging.
4. The book contains fifteen essays that explore different ethnographical, anthropological, ethnobiological, historical and cultural arguments on how cultural objects consolidate identity and nationalism.
5. The book explores how cultural property influences group identity today and in the future.

This book is a valuable source of scholarly arguments on how cultural objects (communal or
cultural property) construct group and national identity of the people.

Category: Primary source- News website page
BOWATER, D., MULVEY, S., & MISRA, T. (2010) Arms Wide Open: Brazil's Statue of Christ. BBC News, 2014. Retrieved from: /news/special/2014/newsspec_7141/index.html

1. This is an excellent BBC news article about the “Statue of Christ the Redeemer” that is the iconic landmark of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
2. The authors present a detailed discussion on what the statue is its history, its intended purpose and how it serves as a symbol for the nation.
3. The statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil is a symbol of the nation. This is best exemplified by the fact that when the statue was hit by lightning, the government reacted quickly to repair it before the June 2014 FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted in the country.

This source presents a valuable example of how cultural objects construct a nation's
identity.

Category: Primary- Journal Article
CARSON, S. J. (2009) Spun from Four Horizons: Re-Writing the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Journal of Australian Studies, 33(4), 417-430.

1. This journal article reviews the extensive literature on the role of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a landmark and symbol of Australia.
2. The author explains that the Sydney Harbour Bridge is not only a symbol of the nation but consolidates the identity of the Australian writers, poets, novelists and historians.
3. The iconic bridge is shown to be an instrument of symbolism that writers have historically used to reinforce Sydney's political and cultural identity.

This article is useful in the discussion of the relationship between national identity and cultural
objects because it presents the example of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, an iconic symbol of Sydney and Australia.

Category: Primary source- Journal article
CHOUDHURY, B. I., & ARMSTRONG, P. (2010) Monument and Architecture in Shaping Bangladeshi National Identity. GBER, 8(3), 45-67.

1. Through an extensive literature review, the authors of this article define national identity and evaluate how it is influenced by art, architecture and monuments in the context of Bangladesh.
2. The authors explain that the national identity can be defined from five dimensions: political, cultural, historic, territorial and psychological.
3. Cultural objects such as monuments shape national identity in all the dimensions and act as objects of symbolic expression of the nation's identity.

This article is very useful in developing an operational definition of ‘national identity' before
discussing how that identity is shaped by cultural objects.

Category: Primary source- book
EDENSOR, T. (2002) National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. New York, NY: Berg- Oxford International Publishers Ltd.

1. This book examines the interplay of culture and national identity in daily life.
2. The author explains that the national identity is created by the people's culture, spatial demarcations and iconic features in the nation.
3. The book explains in detail how objects of cultural, spiritual, historical and moral geography objects create uniqueness in a country.
4. The author outlines major cultural objects that influence national identity including America's Statue of Liberty, the Egyptian pyramids, the Empire State Building, India's Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and many more.

This book is very valuable source in proving that iconic geographical sites and objects signify national identity.

Category: Primary source- journal article
JOHNSON, N. (1995) Cast in Stone: Monuments, Geography and Nationalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 13.

1. As the title suggests, this journal article explores how monuments and geography contribute in shaping nationalism and national identity.
2. The author argues that monuments and other cultural objects are points of ideological and physical orientation around which memory is organized.
3. The article explains that through memory creation, monuments and other cultural objects play a great role in constructing national identity.
4. The author conceptualizes cultural objects as an important part of national geography that identifies the place.

This article is very important in discussing how cultural objects such as monuments and other works of art contribute to create a geographical uniqueness that defines national identity.

Category: Primary source- book
KAPLAN, F. (1994). Museums and the Making of "ourselves": The Role of Objects in National Identity. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

1. This book is extensively cited in the literature about culture and national identity.
2. The book presents fourteen case studies about how culture shapes national identity.
3. In this book, the author explains that cultural collections and exhibitions usually founding museums are a preservation of culture and shape national identity.
4. The author also chronicles how cultural objects in different countries have shaped their identities.
5. The author uses the example of how the Bible's Old testament has shaped the identity of Israel.

This book is a very valuable source of information on how cultural objects and museums shape national identity.

Category: Primary source- journal article
KARP, I. (1988) Culture and Representation. In M. T. Craftsmen, MICHAEL MEISTER (pp. 1-10). Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania.

1. This article explains how identity is constructed through representation of culture.
2. The author explains that art exhibition in museums and through cultural art objects that cannot be housed in museums creates identity.
3. The author of the article, which is more than two decades old, explains that national identity is created through arrangement ad design of cultural objects.
4. The article explains that national identity resonates through interpretation of cultural designs and art.

This article presents great insight into how cultural practices and products such as art influence national identity.

Category: Secondary source- journal article
MACDONALD, S. J. (2003) Museums, National, Postnational and Transcultural Identities. Museum and Society, 1(1), 1-16.

1. This article contends that cultural identity is preserved through art and other products from a particular culture.
2. The author envisions a museum as a repository of cultural, national and transcultural identities.
3. Art and cultural heritage stored in museums are shown to be a key indicator of whether identity of a nation is homogenous or bounded.

This journal article explains how cultural heritage in museum collections influences national identity. The article can be used to develop the argument that if cultural objects in museums shape national identity, so should monuments and other cultural objects, not in museums.

Category: Primary source- book
OSBORNE, B. S. (2001) Landscapes, Memory, Monuments, and Commemoration: Putting Identity in Its Place. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Department of Canadian Heritage for the Ethnocultural, Racial, Religious, and Linguistic Diversity and Identity Seminar.

1 Using the Canadian context, Osborne explains that national identity is invented through history, geography, class and ethnicity that characterize...