Dealing with the concepts of culture and identity, this area focuses on the debate of historiographic tradition - which investigates the internal structure of culture, its syntax and significations - with the study of the connections of this
universe with its external determinants such as material conditions and power relations in society. There are debated, among other concepts, the notions of mentalities, representations and experiences, aiming the dialogue between a cultural history and a social history of culture. There is emphasis in the study of some collective identities such as nation, class, race or ethnical group, conceiving these as fields of social situation and social discourse, with mediative or interactive functions. So, this research area is prone to some identities in particular, as well as is our approach of identity in articulation with culture as discourse and practice depending on chronological, geographical and social parameters adopted. Our mainstream issues are: national identity, intelectuals, historiography, midia and cultural industry, popular culture and ethnical identities, history and art.
This area articulates these two wide concepts through multiple fields of investigation and thematic approaches regarding the interaction between relations of propriety, authority, work and distribution of material and symbolic resources, the conflicts which emerge from these relations and the existing projects of political order with the corresponding myriad of social actors and social mediations. It is considered, then, that social relations in its multiple aspects condition the power which, concomitantly, acts and shapes these same relations. Working with these two concepts makes it possible to elucidate links between economical history, historical sociology, social history and political history.
The area has two thematic axes; one try to articulate the multiple aspects of the formation of the national state, the other considers the analysis of power relations under the light of social strategies of domination and associative nets formed through social coexistence and daily experiences.
