What Is Culture

Culture, Cultural Myths, Tradition and Change

One way to discern and see beyond cultural myths or stereotypes is to have a deeper understanding of what "culture" is, sowe will explore the concept of culture from many angles and use different metaphors to try to describe the similarities and differences between American and Austrian cultural characteristics. We will look at the forces of change in culture from "above" (globalization, corporate brands,technology and media, etc.) and from "below" (immigration, social mobility, demographic shifts, etc.). We will take a closer look at the ways cultural knowledge and content are transmitted (through experience, the family, the education system, the media, the state) and try to analyze who, if anyone, controls the message.

1. Metaphors for "Culture"

The best way to recognize and break down cultural stereotypes is to expand your understanding of what "culture" is. By doing so, sweeping statements such as "Americans have no culture" or "Austria is (not) a multicultural society" begin to seem simplistic and even a bit ridiculous. Take each metaphor below and try to apply it to both the Austrian and American cultures as you perceive them. (This is an exercise in free association – there are no right or wrong answers here.)

DOLLS and EXOTIC NATIVES

The stock metaphor for culture in popular culture is pictures (usually of women) or of dolls dressed in festive native costume. When we speak of "the Germans" or "the Russians" we call up these visual metaphors which equate culture with national identity, and imply that culture is relatively uniform and unchanging. They are usually cute, young, timeless, unthreatening. (Notice that the National Geographic cover shown here plays with its old reputation by placing a mother/daughter photo on the cover that startles the viewer with changes and contradictions in culture and identity.)

The ICEBERG

The popular icebergmetaphor illustrates overt, visible and taught aspects of culture (above water) and "hidden culture"- the world of assumptions, habits, beliefs that may not be consciously articulated or taught. The metaphor implies danger, the necessity of having a skilled pilot, and that there is much more to culture than meets the eye.

AROUND THE CAMPFIRE: Recounting tribal heroic myths

Deal & Kennedy's landmark Corporate Culture brings classic anthropology terms such as ritual, clan, and tribe into business. The metaphor implies that culture is "primitive", powerful, timeless, and that a strong head man can reshape it. Also important here is the impact of rituals on transmitting or preserving culture. An example of modern rituals is the way we celebrate holidays or major events in a person's life (e.g. the first day of school). Cultural stories, legends, and history that are passed from generation to generation can also be included here.

MELTING POTS & SALAD BOWLS JELLY BEANS

Popular metaphors for the relationship of immigrant cultures within a larger nation or dominant culture have shifted from the melting pot to the salad bowl. In the latter, immigrant cultures maintain their original integrity in the new national salad. More cynical observers may note that whether it is stew or salad, it all gets eaten and assimilated in the end.Roosevelt Thomas adds another food metaphor with jelly beans: All jelly beans in the organizational jar are "diverse" not just the red ones or purples ones.

MIND MAPS

Two maps here--the geographic one represents the internal maps people have of their cultural terrain, knowing that "the map is NOT the territory" that reality is always vastly more complex than our mental renderings of it. The other is a mind-map, which depicts the network of associative links in our minds--knowledge triggered by a single word, for example, or the feelings and meanings we associate with a particular behavior. These associations are partly personal, partly collective. Culture in this metaphor is the map of a group's shared meanings and connections.

CELEBRATION!

of diversity, multiculturalism. Notice the metaphor and what it unintentionally communicates: we celebrate holidays, occasions, "special" events. This subtly implies that multiculturalism is decorative, fun, but special, not for ordinary "real" days or for "real" work.

ORGANISM

This biological metaphor sees culture as living, organic, in motion. There are boundaries between internal and external; the organism (and culture) survive by controlling that boundary--allowing nutrients and waste to pass the boundaries, but keeping out foreign intrusions. Within a culture there will be different functions and roles, yet there is a common being-ness.

CHAOS!

Peter Senge, organizational systems theory. Culture is too complex to "manage", should be looked at with awe. One can strive to understand main loops of cause and effect, but realize that you are only capturing a simple version of the mathematically chaotic whole, and that one cannot predict all the effects your actions will create throughout the system.

SOFTWARE OF THE MIND

Geert Hofstede's book of that title uses the primary metaphor of the decade as the boundary between what is human and what is machine is increasingly hard to maintain: the brain as the computer's CPU (=nature, hardwiring) and the mind's culture/knowledge as software. Software is based on algorithms--recipes of sorts--designed by humans for human purposes, then edited and elaborated by future users and programmers.

ECOSYSTEM

Ecosystems and cultures are always dynamic, and contain a vast network of interdependent but diverse elements and none of them an individual culture. Press one spot and the movement is felt throughout the system; the system presses back. New species to the new ecosystem will either die away, adapt, or invade and crowd out "native" species". "Outsiders" to a culture may not last long, may adapt, or may take over--those risks can make both sides nervous.

CULTURE AS A TOOLBOX

Every situation, every person is different. For culture to endure, it must be flexible enough to accommodate many different circumstances. One useful metaphor for culture is the toolbox--one that comes with a stack of reference manuals. Instead of saying "in this culture we make tables THAT way, we raise children or cook a meal THIS way", we acknowledge that culture gives us a set of tools for the task, along with a guide book that suggests how we might use those tools and what the results should look like. Cultural "tools" for making dinner would include heat source and cooking vessels, knowledge of food stuffs, recipes, knives, rules for what items are served at which time of day to which kinds of guests.

BOUNDARIES AS CULTURAL CONTAINERS

We know that change and instability in cultures is a given. Institutions and group membership change over time. The beliefs and practices of your grandmother's ethnic group 75 years ago do not look like the beliefs and practices you follow in your own life. Is a group "ethnic" if its fundamental characteristics change? (This generational question has been an ongoing tension for immigrant groups, and is a hot issue in litigation around Native American tribal rights. Is ethnicity a matter of blood, of particular cultural practices--as defined by whom?, a matter of personal assertion, of nationality, or determined by the formal or informal decisions of your ethnic group about who belongs?)

One way to understand culture is to look past the particular characteristics of cultural practice or bloodlines, and pay attention to a culture's boundaries. This metaphor says the box is more significant than its current content. Cultures are ephemeral results of group experience, not the definition of that group.

Rather it is the boundary between one group and another, the dichotomy, the comparison, that produces cultural patterns. Anthropologist Frederick Barth sees cultural meanings and patterns as forming on each side of a barrier like morning frost. Without walls the meaning does not crystalize. Boundaries are reinforced by stereotyping, and by each group occupying particular niches in the larger culture (a parallel is how siblings will often develop different strengths and roles within a family).

In this situation, even though blue and yellow live close enough to have a large green area of overlap, the historical boundary between them remains strong. Although they will continue to share and adapt and negotiate in the green area, a limited number of differences come to have high emotional and political charge. People may be willing to die for these boundary markers, which come to represent a group's identity. These may be internally chosen (Jerusalem for the Israelis and Palestinians, Cyrillic vs Roman alphabet in the Balkans) or externally imposed (The Nazi use of pink triangles and yellow stars, for example, or dark skin and African features which are boundary markers for US racial groups.).

Adapted from: "What is 'Culture'?", Culture at Work, URL: , accessed May 2010

2. Culture as Knowledge / Mind-mapping exercise

"Anthropologist James Spradley gives an elegantly succinct definition of culture, in which every word is carefully chosen:

Culture is the acquired knowledge people use
to interpret experience and generate behavior."

Source:

Create a mind map of all the concepts, words, ideas, associations, etc. that come to your mind when you hear the word "Culture". So that the results are not too wildly different, use the central framework shown below as your starting point.

3. The Allegory of the Cave

The last metaphor in the Point #3 above emphasizes the boundaries of a culture and implies that one can be "trapped" inside, or in other words, a person can not escape their cultural conditioning. This is a dark view of culture. A slightly more positive perspective is to conceive of culture as a cave – with an opening that lets in light and allows for "escape" and to a higher knowledge. This idea has been around since the times of the earliest philosophers. The most famous example comes from Plato (427-347 B.C.). Read the short excerpts from the "Allegory of the Cave" (part of The Republic, Book VII) and answer the questions. (If you are interested, the entire Allegory can be found on the homepage under "Extra Materials".)

[Socrates] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. [Glaucon] I see. [Socrates] And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.[Glaucon] You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. [Socrates] Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? [Glaucon] True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? [Socrates] And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows? [Glaucon] Yes, he said. [Socrates] And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them? [Glaucon] Very true. [Socrates] And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow? [Glaucon] No question, he replied. [Socrates] To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

Later, Plato goes on to his ideas about the ideal rulers of the state – the Philosopher-Kings:

[Socrates] Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely. or rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, that neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of State; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest. [Glaucon] Very true, he replied. [Socrates] Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now. [Glaucon] What do you mean? [Socrates] I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the cave, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not. [Glaucon] But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better? [Socrates] You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State. [Glaucon] True, he said, I had forgotten. [Socrates] Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the cave, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst. [Glaucon] Quite true, he replied.

(While looking for a "Philospoher-King" graphic in the internet, I came across this bizarre website called "Is Barack Obama the Messiah?" Here's the link:

Questions

a)Take the various elements from the picture of the cave and provide a 21st century equivalent. For example, what is the fire today?What casts the shadows on the wall that people take for reality?

b)The term "island of the blessed" is used in this text and also (often sarcastically) to describe Austria. Explain this term and say whether you think there it is a valid description of Austrians.

c)Plato's ideal ruler is the enlightened philosopher-king who rules out of a sense of social obligation, not thirst for power. Do you know of any leader like that?

d)In modern terms, Plato's ideal state is a strange mixture of elitism (different classes of people) and social welfare/unity. What is it that makes a person "elite" in his State? What is this person obligated to do?