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Re: culture ... (aka there are/no cultures)
by Trichur Ganesh
10 August 2003 22:26 UTC
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It is interesting how all this discussion on culture is coming before the ASA conference on the same theme.  A few reminders and suggestions: (1) Let us not forget that it is anthropologists who had done the most extensive work in the area of "culture(s)".  And of the few I have read, I easily find them the most challenging, as well as the ones who have something profound to communicate. Braudel himself draws his working definitions of culture and civilization from anthropologists, from Mauss in particular.  (2)  To say culture is everywhere or everything is as insightful as saying that society is everywhere or economies are everywhere or politics is everywhere.  I do not think it is a very useful strategy to privilege the one over the others. (3) I want to argue that the focus on the 'cultural' is more at some historic moments than at others - Gunder Frank in one of his earlier works, points out, correctly in my estimate, that investments in culture are correlated with  times of depression.  It is also an idea, I argue, that one can see in the works of some 18th century Aufklarung philosophers, as well as in the works of Freud and Benjamin, before being taken up again in the 20th century by Braudel and others. (4) The work by Stephan Fuchs Against Essentialism does carry some useful suggestions on how a network theory of culture works.  I recommend reading his work, though I also think that it inadequately comes to terms with the dynamics of power relations.  Ganesh Trichur.

Luke Rondinaro wrote:
Yes, culture is not a “thing” if by “thing” we are referring to an actual sociologic entity or substantiality.  Yet, instead of calling it a “process” I would deem it a quality or characteristic of a social group, analogous to the concept from mathematics of taking a function of a function of X (i.e., G(F(X)).

Its primary basis is not in change from one state of meaning within a society to another, but in the dimensionality of values that a people consistently possess.  Humanistically speaking, it is a vision more than a process. It’s similar to a computer program; but its basis isn’t in running like a set of operations as much as it is in characterizing the “software” and “hardware” of the social system. 

<All 'structural' aspects of social life are also cultural performances.>

Yes, I can agree with this.  “Structure” itself is characterized by its systematic linkages and inherent operations.  Thus we have the social equivalent here of the wave/particle from physics.  It is a wave or is a particle?; it’s both.  And thus, also, we can consider social structure in terms of its dynamisms, while dynamisms can also be further analyzed in terms of their structures in the greater social domain.

<Good luck, the 'real' measurements are going to be even more problematic.  Even more rudimentarily, economic behavior is underpinned by cultural beliefs that diverse things--an hour of working at a computer and a washing machine--can be compared and measured on a single scale of value.  Not all humans for all time have believed this--in fact, many still don't, depending on what we are talking about.  So culture is inescapable.>

No doubt.  Of course they are.  But that is why such studies can’t be completed just with the tools of world systemists and/or other standard social science models (used by world historians, sociologists, and economic theorists).  Other input in the form of complexity studies, psychohistory, and systematic philosophy (ala the epistemologies of Kant, Hegel, and even older the Medieval/Classical models ala Abelard, Aquinas, Aristotle, Plato, Heraclitus, et al) is essential to working through these complications of culture from past and present “world systems”

I do agree with you.  “Culture” as a system of meaning complicates our understanding of societies and history.  Yet, not impossibly so or beyond the point where we can highlight common criteria by which all history and all human communities can be explored.  The strange thing is:  yes the threads of society and values are incredibly varied, and seemingly beyond a pt. of convergence.  But similar (and even common) patterns emerge in history despite cultural divides and even geographical ones over time. John Landon’s Eonic Effect confirms this through its exposition of “Axial Age” data; In addition, PH’er Paul Ziolo’s research into transcultural monasticism concurs. Thus, it’s not an impossible barrier to understanding that is created by cultu ral variation.  Science (social and natural) and epistemology can and does cut through the fog.  Perfectly, no.  But to a relative degree, yes. 

Culture does not create absolute social diversity; only somewhat can it do such, and not completely beyond the tendency towards human institutional systematization, commonalities, and integration.  (I'm not sure it even has to be a mechanism of social separation/distinction of people by necessity; culture also can help bring people together.)  Otherwise the traditional Classicists/Humanists would be totally on target.  The variation created by culture and free human activitity would be inhospitable to patternization of social behavior and the systematic integration of peoples' actions.  “Social science” wouldn’t be possible; history and social life would only be the purview of ethics and no systematic understanding of human experience would be able to be accomplished.

That's my own perspective on the matter.  I welcome your's.  (Luke R.)  


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