ABSTRACT
During recent decades the notion of culture has been defined and described as something practiced and performed by the individual rather than something determining identity and practice. Scholars such as Fredrik Barth (1998), James Clifford (1992)and Lila Abu-Lughod (1993) have all in their different ways contributed to highlighting culture as something that is established relationally and dynamically through encounters, movement and narratives. This shift in emphasis on culture as something productive has highlighted the cracks and grey areas of simplistic, insufficient and essentialist tales of cultural difference and cultural clashes and illuminated the power of the individual to interpret, practice and perform culture in innovative and challenging ways (see also De Fina, this volume). Finally, it has contributed to widening the notion of culture to include memberships and identities other than those related to nationality, race and ethnicity such as gender, class, sexuality and religion. An important contributing factor in this development has been the impact of theories of discourse and representation within the field of cultural studies (Hall & Du Gay, 1996). Cultural identity is hereby reformulated as situated and momentary identifications with particular subject positions made available to us through discourse. Furthermore, the field of gender studies and in particular the writing of Judith Butler has had a marked impact on cultural theory and critical theory with its emphasis on gender and sexuality as performed cultural categories. Research within the field of cultural studies and gender studies has effectively illuminated how the performance of cultural identities is both enabled and limited by the subject positions made available through discourse within a given time and place. However, this research has mainly been dedicated to the study of cultural products and productions such as images, literature, photos, commercials and media, while only few studies seek to examine how such performances, and not least the boundaries that limit them, are manifested and negotiated in everyday talk in interaction. While it is by now commonly argued and frequently shown that cultural categories or identities consist of multiple, overlapping and sometimes contradictory memberships that position, empower, 126limit and marginalize the individual in various ways, there is a need for further studies that show how this multiplicity is manifested and managed in specific face-to-face interactions. The performance and achievement of cultural identity does not take place in a void but in particular contexts of practice that outline particular expectations and boundaries of normativity and deviance.
