In both the chapters “Culture” and “Ideology” in The Theory Toolbox, much of the material and topics discussed reminded me of discourse one often hears in anthropology classes, or reads about in anthropological articles/books/etc.
After you study the concept of culture for a while, the notion that culture doesn’t even truly exist (which sounds insane, at first, I know) begins to sound more and more accurate. Culture has never been a tangible thing–it has never been a concept that is easy to pinpoint or assign a set of principles or characteristics to, and this is mainly because “culture” as a single idea or phenomenon, is not set. There are more cultures on this planet than we can count or even know of, and each has its own set of principles, ideas of right and wrong, traditions, practices/ways of life, language, etc. etc. One person can also be a part of more than one culture at the same time–one can also adapt to different cultures to the point that they feel they “belong” to a culture that they were not born knowing. However, many would argue that you can never fully “rid yourself” of the culture you learned as a child. While culture is universally present (and necessary for human existence, some argue) it is not universal in any other way.
The Gertrude Stein quote referenced on page 51, “I am I because my little dog knows me,” is an exceptionally clever way of framing the idea that you are you because of the culture around you and the way your culture recognizes you–not because there is anything about you that is inherently you. Culture is learned through observation at a very young age, and what you know about yourself you know because you have learned your specific culture. It’s a bit of a frightening idea, that a concept we can’t even really pin down defines us in such a huge way. And not only that, but it defines how we see the world. As the authors point out on page 52 of the chapter “Culture,” race and ethnicity are nothing more than cultural constructs–they are essentially meaningless categories that different cultures have construed in different ways–and if two such universally acknowledged/talked about/referenced concepts are cultural constructs, what isn’t?
And furthermore, if culture is just a set of symbols that we give meaning, aren’t we all just participating in a shared bout of insanity in which we agree that essentially meaningless things (outside of the context of culture) actually do hold meaning–so much meaning, in fact, that we build our lives around them?
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz famously said that without culture, humans would not be “natural” or begin to exist in their biologically intended state, but would be “unworkable monstrosities.” It’s certainly true that humans assign meaning to things for their own peace of mind and wellbeing. Human beings need to make sense of the world somehow, and they do it through culture. But isn’t the idea that any one individual culture (our culture, for example) is better than any other a kind of insanity? If we made up this entire concept in the first place, how can we say that one made up concept is better than the next? How can we believe that American culture, for example, is better than the culture of a cannibalistic tribe in Africa–why are our ideas of right and wrong better than theirs? How can the idea of the patriarchy be so firmly rooted in Western culture when there exist other cultures, such as that of the Mosuo people in China, which is a successful matrilineal society in which the women are in charge of any sexual relationship they enter into and are also the head of the households? Where did we come up with the idea that to belong to a certain culture means you automatically have some kind of advantage, or disadvantage? Why does the same symbol mean two drastically different things in two parts of the world–how did creatures with the same physiology manage to interpret everything so drastically different from one another (and thank goodness we did, otherwise the world would be boring.)? These are all the questions that keep me up at night.
Are we really all just choosing to share in the collective insanity that is culture–and if we didn’t, what would become of us?
This is a really interesting expansion on deciding what is a culture. I like the continuation of the argument about what counts as a culture and what doesn’t, and why we get to choose which counts. This mirrors the argument made in the book about “high” and “low” culture but I like that you make this more personal- it’s not about a book or music but about groups of people who live in this world. What makes one better than the other? I think you’d agree that nothing makes one persons culture better; when people start thinking that one is, it spreads hate and negativity that pollutes our world. As a psych minor I also found your argument about how culture shapes a person very interesting. Environment plays a huge role in a person’s development, and our generation is inherently different from our parents and grandparents because of the culture we live in. This was a really fascinating extension of the argument made in the Theory Toolbox.
Alternatives to culture are impossible to fathom likely because of its collective nature, Ainsley. I’m sure you agree that culture as a concept isn’t “bad” (as far as we agree that bad connotates something mutually understood), and perhaps what Geertz meant was that humanity would not be human without its culture, little more than animals. But what values we hold in our cultures, what roles we take on, how we structure it, is entirely mutable, and I love how you described different parts of the world in observing this fact. With the rise of globalization and the Internet, we see how multiculturalism and exchange become more accessible to more peoples. I am personally working on a fantasy novel that is radically less white and ethnocentric than say, Tolkien or Lewis. Would this be possible before the 21st century? Maybe for someone of a higher socioeconomic order able to access various archives in different cultures. But I digress, it’s very intriguing to see how fluid culture is in the abstract, and (at least in the long term, depending on how progressive or reactionary one views the world)in the concrete.
I’m very interested in your use of “access” as a leveling force. Note that the example you give entails a kind of one-sided access: you have access to other peoples, ideas, and cultures. This is a good thing, as it allows you to expand the cast of characters one might normally encounter in classic fantasy. But such access is, of course, far from universal. Our fair authors would likely warn against reproducing something like the “exoticism” of victorian travel diaries: access, in that case, was wholly one-sided. How does one decide what ethical access entails? Is it rooted in the author’s intention? In the effects of the text?
Indeed! Much of my research in attempting to avoid fetishizing the “Other” relates to trying to ground my text, being mindful of the limits of my access. Ethical access is largely subjective and dependent on the context of the actual textual evidence, I would think. Intentions don’t amount to much if the text doesn’t have the revolutionary effects desired – to some degree, my limited access and experience will reflect itself in the text, but that being the case, I’m sure readers will have to understand the text’s historical context, much as we do for victorian travel diaries. This isn’t to say I should give up on striving for ethical access of other cultures in creating my fantasy, rather, that no amount of research could ever possibly replicate the experience of thousands upon billions of lifetimes in different cultures, and reasonable audiences will intuit this.
I agree that a person can belong to more than one culture at a time. I have never given too much thought about which culture I belong to because I fear that it might give me a headache. I spent most of my life trying to not to seem too “black” or too “white” that I’ve gotten over trying to fit into most labels. While I am a black American that doesn’t entirely fit into black culture, my roots are certainly there and I am not eager to hide them. I am also half-Jamaican, but I hardly know a thing about the culture due to the absence of my biological father. While I’d love to embrace it one day, I wouldn’t want it to take over my entire identity. I just want to be known as a person that likes a little bit of everything.
Going off of your comments about us making up the concepts on individual culture, I agree that the notion of one being better than the other does seem ludicrous. If we are the ones making up these concepts, then who are we to say one culture is superior to another? Without culture, and a sense of either equality or shared connection with those around you either ethnically, geographically, socially, or other, society would have a hard time functioning because people have an inherent inclination to exclude others. We are all in our own way contributing in the culture of today, our idea of culture not being a concrete idea, but is somehow recognized as being socially acceptable. That’s what is baffling about the subject: that we are part of this loose idea consisting of predetermined socially acceptable acts, but we couldn’t even describe how we know to do them, or how to define what makes us part of a culture. So honestly, if we’re the ones actively participating in the culture, how can we say it’s better?
I like the conversation unfolding here! Ainsley writes (I’m paraphrasing) if culture is just a set of symbols that we give meaning, isn’t it crazy that we build our lives around essentially meaningless things? But then you quote Geertz on what the absence of culture would actually look like–and it’s basically nothing. I think it’s important to note that socially constructed ideas are not meaningless–indeed, it is those transcendental signifieds, those ideas that remain abstract with nothing grounding the, that are really meaningless. Meaning is found in embodied, lived context where meanings can be experienced and negotiated. Just because what we understand by the concept “Jewish” is constructed and varied in terms of its relationship to religion or ethnicity or race and so on doesn’t make it meaningless; it makes it social. Which is to say, it makes it meaningful, debatable, contestable, and livable.
And once we realize that “culture” is meaningful in this way, we can begin to ask all those difficult questions with which you conclude your post: who decided that one version of cultural expression is more viable than another, that one way of being is “normal” and another “abnormal”? Who controls those norms? And what happens if we fail to interrogate those norms?