Defining, Shaping and Understanding Culture

Observations based on reading:

Street, B. V. (1993). Culture is a verb: Anthropological aspects of language and culture process.
In D. Graddol, L. Thompson, & M. Byram (Eds.). Language and culture (pp.23-43). Clevedon, UK:
BAAL and Multilingual Matters.

[My perspective will be found in brackets.]

[Before reading the article my definition of culture as a Spanish teacher and a former ESL instructor was;

   Culture- practiced customs that are based on the accepted 'norm' or shared beliefs that give members a   sense of belonging due to familiar or shared experiences.

[ I felt it important to summarize this article in order to clarify meaning for myself. ]

Summary of reading:

• Defining Culture-

    According to Street (1993),the disciplines of History and Science are no different from Anthropology in that they change the grammatic usage of words to the noun form in order to explicity define the meaning of complex ideas. Over time this has happened with the term culture. Culture is a verb in that it is a process that is constantly changing. "Culture is an active process of meaning making that is contest over definition, including its own definition"(p.25).

Streets goes onto quote Thornton in an attempt to prove that "culture does" and is not static. Street moves on to explain the notion of authentic culture and the anthopoligical hegemony of 'meanings' being the central piece defining culture. He claims that preocupation with menaings is a "theotretical weakness in the discipline" (p.26)"


His view on authentic culture is that the concept is precarious because it leaves anthropologists to discover the culture as an object instead of allowing a particulur culture to be discussed and contested (p.27).

Street brings in a quote from Asad to make the points that is not a social object because culture and social structures are a result of human meanings. In other words culture doesn't change independent of people. People are constantly changing, therefore culture cannot be an object or a noun. His logic is leading us to the direct conclusion that it must be a verb. [As if verb were the only other part of speech. Could culture be an adverb?]

• Shaping Culture

He jumps onto the notion of what shapes a culture.What creates authority in order change social structures? [I believe he is writing about this in order to solidify his case that culture is shaped and evolving therefore it cannot be an object. Personally, it had me sidetracked because he went from defining culture to how it is shaped.] He descirbes the importance of 'essential meanings' of the shaping of power in culture as a hot suject for anthropologists in the 1990's and how that is determined by language and lingustics and how those two pieces are overemphasized in study of culture.

(p. 28-29) He discusses the formalization of speech limits the ability of people to respond and leads to authority and power, when the code is followed correctly. He discuss how Bloch equates formal speeches to coersion leading to social control by means of generalization and minimization of differences between percieved memories of shared events, which are also shaped by the orator.

[ I absolutely agree with the argument that formalized speech is nothing more than coersion. Look at Fidel  Castro for example. He plays upon familiar history and common trials within the society to coerce his points. His speeches are so long winded and he plays on the emotions of the public through shared experiences within the culture that either everyone in the crowd is nodding their head in heartfelt agreement or half asleep because they forgot what his original point was in the first place. He is an extreme example of course, but if you look at any politican, pastor, even teacher ultimately this is what is done in a speech. We create a formula in which the listener has no ability to respond play upon shared experiences until hopefully the entire group nods their head in agreement or is left feeling like the orator has the power. Although this is a fantastic point about the shaping of cultures, I feel the point is off-topic when Streets is ultimately trying to define culture in different terms.]

Streets explains that Parkins warns Bloch against reducing cultures to it's performative functions (p. 31) which is to say analysizing the speeches as if a speech is the only factor in how culture changes and how authority and social structures are developed. Parkins claims that doing this would ignore completely the social context. [I completely agree with this idea that the shaping of culture is more than simply a speech to gain authority. One needs to also observe what events are taking place at that time that have created the opportunity for the speech be accepted by the people. Was there a war? Are people feeling an increased sense of need for change new direction or leadership? What are the predominant factors that create the social climate for one to gain power. That is to say that not every speech is what gains a person their position in society.] Parkins also goes on to debate Bloch in saying that how meanings gain power or authority do not define a culture more reflect that culture (p.31).

Streets moves on to say that Thornton describes the idea or perception of history to be the most important factor in shaping a culture. In other words the reality of what happened is irrelevant it is the hegemonic view of what happened that shapes a culture. Also that a culture is defined by comparison what one culture is not such as in the case of tribes in South Africa (p.32).

• Defining Culture

Moving back onto the definition of culture Street (1993) quotes Thornton who defines culture as a resource;
[Resource is also a noun.]
                "while there are differences in the way that people behave and think and live, this reflects their differing access to cultural resources, as well as their use of these resources to make statements to each other about themselves"(p.33).  In other words individuals within a society use the resources of the resources of culture to define their identity. [I believe that Streets uses this quote to show the uses of resources as an action and to further solidify that culture is something made by people who are constantly changing, which is a process or a verb.]

He continues to quote Thornton and talk about what culture does it 'creates boundaries' between people.

• Understanding of Culture

Streets jumps again to a new topic of understanding culture when he discusses Parkin's definition of understanding culture. Parkins claims that in order to understand a culture one must know the history behind why each meaning exists not just the behaviors themselves (p.33). [Perhaps Streets is jumping to this subject to again support his claim that since people create history it must be a fluid living transitional concept, which it is, but the connections in his logic are not illustrated on this page.] [Parkins claims are correct that to truely understand a culture one must know the history behind each act. From there I have to ask myself, "Do I truly understand my culture?" Do I know the history behind why we chop down healthy trees and adorn them with perfectly good food at Christmas time? No. A person outside the culture may think this is extremely wasteful and ridiculous. Do I know why my parents always used to say "Goodnight sleep tight don't let the bed bugs bight?" No.  It is in fact kind of unnerving thinking that parents instead of saying sleep well or "Sleep with the Angels" like Mexicans do. The bedbug saying is a bit anxiety producing to say to a small child right before they go to bed. However, I live in my culture and have deep understandings about certain aspects of my culture. My claim is therefore that like languages cultures can never be truely understood, since as Thornton pointed out it is the history of the idea. My father's accounts of the history may be different to another person's father's there are so many perspectives and as Jane Cowan asks in Street's article, Is culture actually shared, by whom and to what extent (p.35)? My argument ensues that no one person can truly understand a culture. Another statement I would like to add is that culture is lived never fully understood or shared that is the innate problem with the discipline of Anthropology that throughout the process of embedding oneself in a culture in order to observe and study it the boundaries get blurred. An anthropologist and their ways eventually becomes a part of that culture that is the object of study and that culture a part of them both culture and individual become tainted. Which leads me to think that knowing a culture even ones own is impossible.]

Streets also notes Cowan's separation from individualists and seeks an explanation of the group other than the constrained concept of culture and she finds this in the term hegemony (p. 36). She feels hegemonic ideas are generated by the majority are not forced by authority and are open to dissent, which results in a more fluid definition and defines the group as a more dynamic process (p.37). She specifically describes the beauty of hegemony as, "it explicitly makes problematic the links between conciousness, sensory experience, and power in a way that the concept of culture, as a set collective of shared symbols and meanings, does not" (p.37). [This is an amazing quote that delves into the thought that her definition of hegemony in replacement of culture is so complicated that study, and debate are encouraged because culture is that complicated. Culture cannot be pegged to meanings and symbols. These symbols and meanings represent different things to every member of the culture and are open to debate; as Street describes them as "multivocal and contradictory character and giving voice to the local perceptions and differences" (p.37).]

Street moves on to discuss the emphasis that anthropolgy placed on linguistics and language as defining culture as excessive. [Street prooves his point very well here. While reading I was yelling, "it is! Modes of communication are everything in a culture." Towards the end of reading I agreed that perhaps language is not as important in culture as I thought.]
Street successfully argues that many cultures do not need language to communicate in order to thrive. That many young are simply learning through immitation. He even goes so far as to mention modern literate societies are not cognitively more developing than their illiterate predecessors the young are simply immitating as they have in the past (p.39-41).

• Reflection-Although Street drew weak connections between his sources and the main argument, through the juxtaposition of his choice of sources I learned a lot about anthropological perceptions of culture.

[After reading the article my newly formulated definition of culture is;

Culture is a dynamic process by which a set of people choose to live.]