Analysing culture: Respect

Ethnocentrism: Issues for a (cientific) analysis of culture

Studying cultures as "a particular collective mind set of a particular social group", has an issue. If each person belong to a culture, their own mind set, so does the person who is studying cultures. That means you could try to measuring other culture with your own cultural values, and that wouldn't be objective neither cientific. Measure cultures with your own cultural values doesn't help you to understand others, because different cultures have different goals in life. Doing that, you only get an obvious and selfish conclusion: your culture is the best and you are the best person under your own rules! That has no sense and is called ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism is not only for those who research cultures, that happen too with everyone who has to face others cultures. In some sense, ethnocentrism is useful to keep coherency with your own culture (if people don't feel comfotable in their own culture, there is a problem, right?). But too much ethnocentrism conduce to racism and xenophobia. But often just give us more simple problems or tons of headache. As happened with WHO (World Health Organization), when they tried to vaccinate african people for first time. African parents avoided vaccinate their sons because bacteria and virus weren't part of their cultural explanation of illness and disease. Furthermore they who had done it, had experienced fever and other symptoms. Even some thought that whites were trying to kill them. Ethnocentrism made that WHO thinks western medicine had the same status in Africa than within western societies as European, Australian or USA. While africans response was rational - because in their experience nothing good had come from white people- WHO blamed unrational response and ignorance. Result: Failure. A failure that could be avoid from cultural relativism perspective.

Cultural relativism

One solution is given by historic particularism. Following this thought- basis of culturalism-, the key concept is cultural relativism. That means to analyze a culture we have to do it in their own frame, considering all their elements and how their interact. Each culture has their own context and history and it cannot be compare with others without pay attention to this frame. Every culture can only be interpreted in their own context that allow us to a cientific approach and reduce (but not delete) researcher bias.

In that way we can explain why !Kung in subsaharian Africa still practice "hunting and gathering" despite know agricultural technics. If we put their economy in their context (environment) we can see that Kalahari desert is not a place for agriculture. Following Howell and Lee calculations, to get the health and diet that !Kung already have, they only must work 3 hours per day while their agricultural neighbors have to do it for 10 hours and  have worse health. Who is more efficient? However Namibia and Botswana governments have put pressure to make them change their lifestyle and making them work more, forcing to adopt agriculture and cattle farming. Today !Kung have to face poverty and social issues.

Relativism problems

In many regions in Africa and Asia there is a islamic branch that used to practice female circumcision, which is clitoris mutilation when women reach adult age (that could be 12 years old). This means women have to face this painful tradition because the social beliefs of clitoris is a masculine feature that has to be eliminated. Just because is a cultural practice, their practioners accuse their detractor to be ethnocentric and defend their position basis on culture, despite the brutal torture.

Another example was south african apartheid. Where M.W. Eiselen used cultural relativism to justify social segregation between whites and blacks. His position was apartheid (segregation) protects cultural identity and integrity of africans cultures, where weren't desirable their westernization, because could cause social desintegration.

Does relativism applies to those situations?

Possible dilema solution

First we have to understand cultural relativism is an analysis tool to get a deeper understanding inside a context but not justify any practice just because is a cultural traditions. Often happens that after an analysis we get a contradiction. And that is what happen in the first case. Women are not agree but they cannot avoid it because they live in a masculine culture and have no power to change it. Nevertheless some changes have come. Same happen in the second case, when apartheid was abolished.

Justify hastily and without context a practice just because belong to a cultural tradition is bad as ethnocentrism and is not cultural relativism but moral relativism. Culture allows human adaptation because is dinamic, change across the time. That means is no argument to defend any behavior, but as a system, as a context. Cultural relativism doesn't forbid us to get an opinion, after deep analysis, and want some change.

Ferraro y Andriatta, 2010, Cultural Anthropology: An Applied Perspective.
Harris M. Cultural Anthropology
Kuper A. 2001, Culture: Anthropologist' Account

Culture Science III: Cultural Studies and Communication Theory

Cultural Studies

Another academic tradition which studied culture was Cultural Studies. Born from History (as discipline), specially among social historians, and some literature studies. Their founders (Raymon Williams, E.P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart among others) tried to bring cotidianity and culture toward historic analysis. Basicly they kept the line of Frankfurt School about mass culture, but they enriched it bringing some aspects of conflict theory. They see culture as modes of living and values system within a particular time, but also as a collective feeling formed by history inside a context.

It was Williams who introduced the Ideology Theory of Althusser and Gramsci into the analysis. Basicly this theory said that "ideology" is a layer of society made of ideas, among  those culture is part of. This layer is in conflict by different social actors who try to establish an "hegemony" or, said it in other way,  get control of all the layer (which produce naturalization of those ideas). Following that theory, Williams said through that conflict the culture is created across the time. He identified:

• Dominant Forces: which bring structure to the cultural system
• Residual Forces: they were formed in the past but are still present
• Emergent Forces: New values and adaptations.

In that way, Williams could introduce notions of conflict, difference and contradiction, but above all, a notion of dinamic culture, something that change through the time. That allowed him to make a difference between the organic popular culture in pre-industrial England and current mass culture. Stuart Hall would add later that more than just make a difference we have to say that the organic popular culture ceased to exist because the modes of living that produced it had ceased to exist.

Communication Theory

Another great contribution was use communication theory to analyse the culture, specially, mass culture. In 1971, UNESCO commissioned a study to understand tv effects on population to Stuart Hall. He said that in cultural transmission was several process involved. Mainly a codification process (the message has to be created with references to reality and inside of a given cultural context) and decodification (receptor made their interpretation based on their own references of reality and their own analysis), so formally, there is three reading options:

• Dominant: The message is read exactly it was codify (Unlikely)
• Negociate: The message is negotiated (most usual)
• Opossite: The message is read inside another alternative interpretation frame.

In that way, Hall was allowed to say that media and mass culture have no control effect over their audience, but their contents are negotiated. Today is ease to prove it, because TV use the rating system, they are concern about what audiences want to see. Channels and producers propose contents, but public decide their success or failed.

Who is reponsible for rubbish television?

Of Course, all of this started the introduction of new concepts as credibility, consensus (and an argument about if is natural or naturalized rather than socially constructed) and the rol of the social media on it and in the cultural reproduction and legitimacy construction.

Source:

During, S, 2005, Cultural Studies A critical introduction

Culture Science II: Sociology

As we said in the previous article, anthropology, as science of human adaptation, is not the only one interested in culture. Sociology does it as well. But is not mainly interested in diversity among different societies, as anthopology does, rather than is interested in diversity within one specific society.

The main focus of sociology is the complex industrial society. Their origins were among philosophers and economists. On it, it has tried to study the difference among people of their own culture and society.

Cultural difference inside the society.

In the begining, sociologist had studied high culture, high knowledge, high arts, high educations and high manners among high class. Many through written culture of elites, specially history, because it was the main source of data. But soon they realized that low class had developed their own culture, a popular culture, non-written, orally, that offered resistence, sense of belonging, but at the same time, conformity with a social system.

For Bajtín, carnaval is a popular culture manifestation that used to  practice "inversion": The king was the joker, the joker was the king. Everyone could play to be whatever they want to be. Is it a pressure relise for social tension?

In other hand, another approach was developed by Frankfurt School, where Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer realized about a new kind of culture, product of social transformations of industrial age. They added to the typical analysis of high culture and popular culture, the concept of mass culture. Produced in the industrial way (newspapers, magazines, cinema, television, radio, discography), their aim was keep mass of people in control and acquiescent. A kind of continuous propaganda to manipulate public opinion, keep them ignorant. But not all Frankfurt thought the same. Benjamin saw it different, he thought mass culture as a new opportunity for a more pluralistic culture.

 Mickey mouse was an analysis object in order to study mass culture: While Adorno said that make mass stupid, Benjamin saw on it a example of a new time, the humankind laughing of technical progress.

Of course this argument and the crossing between popular and mass culture was very interesting, even going outside of sociologist's analysis and talking to others like history and comunication theory.

Sources

Bajtín, M., 1965, Popular culture in middle age and renacensse.

Burke, P., 1978, Popular culture and Modern europe.

Zubieta, Ana María, 2000, Cultura popular y cultura de masas: conceptos, recorridos y polémicas.

Culture science I: anthropology

Many disciplines have faced the "culture issue", many more have used it as explanation to theories. Culture has been use by many disciplines as economics, politics science, art studies, literature and linguistic studies, policy makers, psychology, sociology, human geography, cultural management, history, medicine, biology and so on. Even many entrepreneurs and sport coaches use it. And of course, probably you and me trying to give an explanation of some thing that we don't fully understand.

But the most obsessed discipline with culture concept is, probably, anthropology. Even some define it as culture science. But that is not exact. Anthropology is the behavior science that study human adaptation, evolution and diversity. And that is why culture is so important for anthropologists.

Anthropologists think in culture as the way that humans adapt to their environment. They inscribe their vision of culture on the version that talk about costums, norms, modes of living, a mind set. They say that humans adapt their environment through their biology, but mainly through their culture. Technology, knowledge, costums, everything helps to adapt them to their environment. In that way, culture explain diversity, but also evolution, as that something that change across the time.

Culture as System

In bali, the rice  fields design are determin by religious factors (like do a proper ceremony), environmental factors (amount of rain) and social factors (colective work is organized acording wedding alliances). Here, culture, is a very integrated system.

The concept has been very central for anthropology, so some people think that the discipline started with it. This could be right in USA, where the discipline began with a school called culturalism. Founded by Franz Boas, this school thinks that in order to understand humankind we must learn their lenguage, costums, way of living. We must relate all aspect of social life like human ecology, linguistic, history, social organization, mode of production, mithology, beliefs. All that organized as a system. We call this point of view Holism.

For culturalists, culture is a proper unit of study, different to "psychi" for psychologists, basicly because is colective instead individual. Culture is shared customs, behaviors, mind sets. All related with different and interconected variables. A whole product, a whole system. So culture study is very complicated thing, like the concept itself, but at the same time very interesting. Let see what has to tell us.

Culture Definition

Culture definition changes all the time. It always will depends on contexts. So is quite hard thing to do. And what about all those books already written about it? There is a lot. Even there is one written in 1952, where the authors (Kluckhorn and Kroeber) gathered 163 definitions. The thing is that word is "polisemic", it has a lot of meanings, and all of them change following where,  what historic time and with who you are. So we'll start to saying that culture definition is, defintly, something that doesn't stay fix, is something dinamic. So, Where do we begin?

Defining by time, place and class.

Civilizations Map by Huntington

Let check this little history out...

Romans started to talk about culture, but in very different way that we are used to. They said culture is when you grow a plant. Yes, they used to refer to something that today we call "agri-culture". But, there were some who thought that word could be use to speak about growing your soul. That idea wasn't really popular, but it was good enough to be remembered.

While the dark age started in europe, the monks and other intelectuals kept such a knowledge. With the rise of enlightment, some retake that idea, specially Rousseau, who used to make a difference between humans and animals, because just the human can cultivated himself. He talk about culture without distintion of the concept "civilization".

He wasn't the only one. All french in that time thought the same. They thought that culture is refine manners and soul. Civilizacion was the progressive improvement. Of course, they thought they were the maximum expression of civilization. Pretty humble. So, culture and civilizations was a kind of stairs, going up if you have much culture and going down if you have just a little, also with non, you were no more than a "savage" or "barbarian". There was only one way, culture was singular and universal, difference is just different step in civilization stairs.

But in the other side of the Rhin river, people thought different indeed, basicly because Germany wasn't a unified and centralized nation, but many different states. No one could said "we are the most civilized ones here", but every one had a particularities. So their thinkers at that time, the romantics, thought that the culture (kultur) was different for every town, and there is no one culture but many, every nation has different goals in this life, then different ways to live.

Later, with awakening of science, some started to study it formally. In the begining, they followed the civilization idea, strongly motivated by evolutionary ideas. Some (Maine, Taylor, Morgan) thought that the "natural" course of culture was going from savage to barbaric and end in civilization. But there were some others that thought in several nuclear civilizations and their influence area where they diffuse their culture. They even thought in some crossing in the middle of two civilizations.

Both approaches (evolutionist and diffusionist) were considered pre-scientific because they used poor quality data, didn't sistematic analysis and got conclusions before results. However, their focus remained. Neo-evolutionist, as White who change "civilization" for "Optimal energy use" or Huntington, who wrote about a multicivilization world conflict, a kind of new "western civilization against barbarics", are still present. In the other hand, Cultural relativism developed diversity and particularity as basic terms just to start to talk about other people and culture.

This last particular approach has been very influential among international institutions. The UNESCO (United Nations for Education, Science and Culture Organization) use it as basis of its concept and work, and provide us one of the most popular definition of the term.

that in its widest sense, culture may now be said to be the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs;

However, culture term is a very european concept and the "social groups" outside europe and western cultures, have serious problems to work with tit. There are not a few who question it. The concept itself has been in the middle of many problematics around the world (e: Sudafrican Apartheid). But at the same time, there are others who used as argument to defend their political, economic or ecological causes.

Culture definition today is still on going. How we used and thought it is a long argument, but for now we have a map to locate future definitions.

Sources:

Huntington, Samuel P., 1996, The clash of civilizations and the remaking the new order.

Kottack, Cultural Anthropology.

Kuper, Adams, 2000, Culture, The Anthropologist's Account.
UNESCO website http://en.unesco.org/

Welcome Culture

The culture is...is a word hard to define. It is used very often in many contexts and it has many meanings. For many it is about manners and education; for other, about knowledge and wisdom, many more think is about high arts. But there is not a few who talk about culture like a way of living of different people or like a mind set that allows or  forbids us to do certain things or take certain actions.

Papua Island has the highest cultural diversity in the world

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Sartre was a intelectual that made several contributions to the culture with his books. But to What culture?

For every case, culture looks like something deep and misterious, untouchable and incorporeal. Even when we talk about sculture or "material culture", as it use to said by archeologists when they talk about artifacts made by humans in ancient times. Even those objects don't capture all the complexity of term. The culture is in the simbolic ground.
 

There is further elements that aparently every definition has in common: the culture is always something done by, among and to humans. Humanity and culture are two very related concepts. There is no one without the other. Whether culture is education, only the humans have it, whether is arts, that is a human expresion, and as a mind set, that is a human mind. Then, explore the culture is, basicly, explore the human being and our complexity. Welcome Culture. Introducing to humankind.