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“Culture/culture/cultures/anti-culture”

ANTH 351: Cross-Cultural Dynamics

February 10th, 2015

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The Story of a Concept

• What is “culture”?

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The Story of a Concept

• What is “culture”? Is it…

– something unique to humans; specific to us as “higher” or more sophisticated creatures?

– what distinguishes us from other animals?

– “civilization”—that which makes people “civilized” or “cultivated”?

– what sets us apart from “savages”?

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Changing concept of “Culture”• The concept of “culture”-changing

• In the English language, (18th century), seen as “the growth and tending of crops and animals, and by extension the growth and tending of human faculties” (Raymond Williams).

• Development of intellectual and artistic human faculties that transcended the material necessities of human life

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“Culture” as a European Achievement• So “culture” = “Culture” (w/ capital C)

• Advanced state of development, beyond immediate necessities of material life; beyond “nature”

• In Europe—way to distinguish themselves from non-Europeans, who they saw as “barbaric”; also, elites from working classes and peasants

• At high and dominant point of 18th Century Europe: “Culture” is what “we” (Europeans/elites) had; others not civilized, and had less or no culture…? (or high/low culture distinction…)

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“Culture” & the Romantic Tradition• Romantic movement in Europe (e.g.,

Johann Herder) criticized idea that all human history was leading to high-point of 18th century European ideas and people

• Called it insulting to both nature and to other people (non-Europeans; non-elites)

• Critical of overemphasis on “Reason” and material progress, and glorified the emotions and the spiritual

• Notion of the “noble savage” who was free of these European tendencies…

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“Culture” in the 20th Century

• SO, slowly, European recognition that other, seemingly marginal people also had “Culture”—e.g., idea of “folk culture”

• Idea of various “cultures” (plural).

• By late 20th century, idea that there are many cultures, all of which are valid ways of being

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“Culture” in the 20th Century

• Rather than the singular achievement of a particular society, we’ve moved on to a broader view of culture as common to all human beings

• So we now have a plural view of cultures

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Culture

• A formal definition: Sets of learned behaviors and ideas that humans acquire as members of society. Humans use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which they live.

• A basic understanding: Everything that people have, think and do as members of a society

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From “Culture” to “cultures”?

• This move seems to address one issue, which is how to understand people different from us as also fully human

• BUT, does it help us address conflicts between values held by different cultural groups?

• We’ll get to this later…

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Dress…

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Sacred Space: a Rajasthani temple

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Body Modification

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Food

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Food…

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Ethnocentrism

• Judge others according to the values of your own society

• Misinterpret other cultures because you use the concepts of your own culture

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Ethnocentrism

• All societies are ethnocentric.

• Relevance and impact of particular instances of ethnocentrism is always related to dominance and power

• Western ethnocentrism has had great impact on the world

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Cultural relativism

• Understand the values and customs of another culture in terms of that culture

• Make the effort to understand the other culture in its own terms

• Be hesitant about judging

• Try to understand, not necessarily to accept or agree

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Cultural relativism• CULTURAL RELATIVISM is an approach, not an

answer• It is not simply the position that there is no

way for us as individuals to judge right from wrong. This would mean that, as individuals, we could never disapprove of what any society did.

• Rather, it is a technique that helps us deal with radical difference

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Challenges to the Ethnocentrism-Cultural Relativism Divide:

The Question of “Human Rights”

• If different “cultures” have not just different practices, but also different values and criteria for judging which practices are appropriate and which ones aren’t, then how can outsiders judge at all?

• Can there be any universal values/rights in such cases—e.g., universal human rights?

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“Universal Values”

• “Universal” values are very largely derived from Western ideas and norms about what it means to be human

• They have been given the status of “universal” as a consequence of Western colonial and imperial dominance that climaxed in the mid 20th century—encoded in institutions like the United Nations, and ideas like “human rights”

• There have been two simultaneous responses to this “moral” dominance of the West

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The “West” as parochial

• First, many intellectuals and activists from the colonized world used Western ideas against the West itself, pointing out the hypocrisy of Western colonial powers who touted equality and democracy but did not extent these values to the colonized

• So colonized people pointed out that the West is itself parochial (rather than universal) and inconsistent, and that it itself does not live up to what it pretends are “universal” ideas

• They forced the West to change (retreat from its colonies, for instance) on the basis of the West’s own professed ideals

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The Non-West as different but equal (at least!)

• Second, many colonized peoples argued that Western dominance had destroyed or damaged their own cultural ideas and practices

• Argued that the West could not be seen as an adequate model for how everyone else should conduct their lives and design their own societies

• Said that did not need the West to tell them how to live in the modern world, and that their own cultural traditions provided adequate guidance

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The Rise of Cultural Relativism

• Cultural relativism in this sense can be seen as the collapse of the dominance of Western norms (Western ethnocentrism), and a good thing as far as the rest of the world is concerned

• Also, a good thing as far as anthropologists are concerned, to the extent that we are in favour of people everywhere having the right to determine their own lives

• BUT, this does not help us deal with the question of how one makes judgments across cultural boundaries

26Missing some context?

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Cultural Miscommunication…

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• Sometimes the claims of cultural relativism are also used by some to defend violent practices in their own societies as necessary dimensions of their “cultures” that outsiders don’t understand and therefore have no right to criticize—e.g., FGC, or honour killings.

• Such practices raise the question: what is the relationship between culture and human rights?

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“Honour Killing” in Pakistan

• ABC report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ttwyNZEu4

• Hannah Irfan interview:• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQk4S5vU

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The Limits of “Cultural Relativism”?

• How do we deal with this without resorting to ethnocentric arguments about why “our” values are superior to (e.g., more humane or “civilized” than) “theirs”?

• Anthropologists have been seen as an obstacle to human rights because they argue for cultural relativism as opposed to cultural/moral absolutes.

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The Limits of Ethnocentrism

• First, why avoid ethnocentrism?

– Western ethnocentrism has a history in many parts of the world and generates resistance

– Western critics of non-Western cultural practices are seen as stooges of the West, or as puppets of imperialist powers, or (relatedly, and not always unreasonably) as disrespectful towards tradition in general

– Often, even locals who criticize problematic practices are then associated with Western attempts at dominance and are resisted or marginalized in local contexts

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Disaggregating “Culture”

• To escape these limitations, we need to recognize certain things:

• Violent practices, in any society, cannot be reduced to a set of patterns that we call “culture”

• Such practices have to do with hierarchies of power and meaning, and have political, economic, and social dimensions

• So, it’s not really useful to say “their culture made them do it” (that would be CULTURAL DETERMINISM)

• Rather, the important questions become: who’s doing what? how? why? to whom? with what effects? etc.

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Reconceptualizing “Culture”

• Such questions uncover differences, inconsistencies, contradictions, arguments, conflicts and struggles within social and cultural groups (cultures are not homogenous)

• We can work more effectively with marginalized people or victims of violence to address their grievances without bringing in our own ethnocentric agenda (through mutual helping and learning, cultures borrow from each other without necessarily losing their own specific/unique features/capacities)

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“Culture” unbound… (and messy)

• Cultures aren’t bound and/or closed entities, there is constant

give and take (“diffusion”) between different groups;

• Impossible to identify where one “culture” ends and another

begins, their boundaries are fluid and leaky

• Cultures are not homogenous, but are characterized by

subcultures, differences, conflicts, arguments, hierarchies, etc.

• “Culture” is not isolated from political, economic, social, etc.,

pressures; “cultural traditions” might be characterized more by

arguments about certain things rather than by homogeneity…

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CULTURE: Rethinking the concept

CULTURAL DETERMINISM CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Homogenous Historically Produced, incorporating difference

Tightly Integrated Porous to outside influences & pressures

Fully Consensual Incorporating competing repertoires of meaning and action

Whole and Complete Changing unevenly, fragmented

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Approaches to theorizing “culture”

1. Culture as distinct from nature2. Culture as knowledge (cognitive view)3. Culture as communication (system of signs)4. Culture as a system of mediation (mediating tool)5. Culture as a system of practices (e.g., habitus)6. Culture as a system of participation (practice always has a

social, collective and participatory quality)

No single definitive approach: use what helps make your point and aids your research.