ABSTRACT
Notions of some kind of natural relation between culture, place and identity have constituted a relatively stable mental geography throughout modernity— at least in what is conventionally referred to as the ‘West’. These notions include the idea that ethnic and racial origin determines the cultural orientations of a person, the idea that cultures can be meaningfully described in terms of their ‘content’ and the idea that cultural groups have some kind of natural affiliation with a specific territory.
