Re: culture ... ("Culture is Everywhere")

< 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. I want to argue that the focus on the 'cultural' is more at some historic moments than at others - Gunder Frank …investments in culture are correlated with times of depression. 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. >

But to some extent, “culture is everywhere” as is economics, and politics. In fact, they all flow into one another and into/out of the totality of the WORLD SYSTEM. Yet, where I personally part company with AGF and others is to where such categories are argued as being meaningless or non-distinct from other units. They are as distinct and meaningful as any unit of analysis is, based upon the fact that: (given a particular focus of level or scope in either world history or the WS) these intermediate units or subsets constitute specific loci at which the Micro- and the Macro- {social parts and wholes} intersect. “Cultures”, “polities”, and “economies” do exist ((as interzonal regions and domains - where the very big of human experience cross-pollinates with the very small.)) Individual and small-group agencies meet up with mass human agency/environmental influence/& macrohistoric factors in such an area.

<“Concept of 'culture is everywhere'. '[C]ulture' was not some group of ideas, texts, images sprinkled atop a 'material' 'structure' but being constantly produced everywhere. (Sherman) There is a difference … between culture and ideology. (Ganesh)>

Interesting points. Reg. Cultural “sprinkling”: I wouldn’t say culture is “sprinkled” on ‘structures” as much as it radiates from them (in terms of their being “imagined” and ‘behavioral’-‘material’).

<… The over-use to which the term 'culture' is subject … emptiness in bland assertions like 'culture is everything, it is everywhere' - why would anyone make this kind of a statement without the necessary research work that ought to accompany this generalization? And if it takes fieldwork and research to make this generalization then it is the anthropologists that one may want to learn from ... >

The term “culture” is overused because it’s being applied to many different situations without distinction as to which context it’s being used in. There’s a big difference when the concept is dealt with in heritage studies, social systems scholarship, or POMO-styled research, etc.

As to culture’s universality within the life of our species, here we have to remember the ends-to-which different intellectuals might apply or work from such a statement. Empirical theorists or modelers are going to handle it differently than empirical or technical practitioners of the “culture” concept’s usage in social commentary, policymaking, etc.

Furthermore, in as far as scholars must also be epistemologists, there are points at which such statements must be used to consider still larger areas of inquiry and greater principles of social scientific knowledge. In such cases “culture is everything/ everywhere” must be taken as a starting point/premise towards the derivation of other principles. When such statements are used in the latter sense, the sense of using secondary source material as primary sources, proving the premises once again becomes redundant and untenable. There are two choices: re-proving the “given” term or moving onto the research that results in further conclusions. When the aim is discovering new conclusions about larger/incredibly smaller areas of analytical inquiry in social science scholarship, it makes better sense to adopt the latter approach over the former. Otherwise we end up “recreating the wheel.” (Luke R.)