On 11 February, a new edition of the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture Foros lecture series, organised in cooperation with BBConstrumat and directed by lecturers Guillem Carabí and Fredy Massad, is due to get underway. Manuel Delgado, full professor of Anthropology at the University of Barcelona (UB), will be the person charged with opening the new edition, with a lecture entitled “Identity as a Social Construct”. 

“Identity is not essence, it’s not substance; it is the result of labelling mechanisms arising as a result of an encounter, often conflictive, between contrasting individuals and groups. Identity is therefore not a starting point for relationships between subjects or groups, but the consequence. We don’t distinguish ourselves from others because we’re different; we're different because we distinguish ourselves from others, or because we’re distinguished from others”, explains the professor. 

Manuel Delgado is one of Spain’s most renowned anthropologists. Since 1986, he has been a professor of Religious Anthropology and Urban Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, where he coordinates the Research Group on Social Exclusion and Control. His work focuses primarily on the construction of collective identities in urban contexts, religious life and the social appropriations of public spaces, issues on which he has published numerous scientific articles and essays.  

This new edition of Foros, an annual series of lectures about architecture, has been organised around the title “Identities”. The series’ programme looks to contribute to the debate on the concept of identity in contemporary architecture, strongly marked by the present trends in globalisation. 

Language: Spanish

Free access