[LINK] "When “culture” erases history"

[rfmcdonald]

Savage Minds' Ryan has an interesting post up talking about the sloppy use of the word "culture" as a catch-all excuse to avoid sustained engagement with issues. The examples he provides of his ethnographic studies in Baja California, where there is apparently some level of conflict between Mexicans and American expats (for instance, the Barbara of the text), are illuminating, as is the larger framework he sets out.

Various people used culture-based arguments to explain differences between groups during my fieldwork. Interestingly, as with Barbara, many these arguments often shifted back and forth between specifics (actual events, people, etc) to generalized statements about culture (ie the “Mexicans” tend to do X, Y, or Z). Often there were cases in which specific grievances (e.g. a minor labor dispute) were explained away by generalizations about larger groups. Culture played a key role in some of those explanations. In Barbara’s case, cultural differences provide a deeper answer for why the two sides of the community cannot get along. Maybe this sort of culture-based argument also provides an easier, or more convenient answer to a frustrating situation. She seems to argue that there are intrinsic cultural tendencies or traits in “Mexicans” (she includes Mexican-Americans in this as well) that make it impossible for the two communities to get along, to deal with the past, and to find a way to sit down and break some bread. So her views and ideas about culture somehow trump her knowledge of history.

I think this dismissal of history is critical, especially using culture as the ultimate explanatory tool. And it’s actually not all that uncommon to see this sort of thing–the use of culture to displace, if not efface, very real histories. I’m thinking of some of the “culture of poverty” arguments, and this instance in which David Brooks used the idea of culture to explain away poverty in Haiti. I see similar uses of culture in the mainstream media, TV news, etc all the time. Often, culture is seen as a deep, static, unchanging sort of quality that different human groups possess. So culture is what helps to explain why people do things differently. What’s the problem, you ask? Well, the static version of culture that we often see in these sorts of public debates looks pretty outdated–if not outright wrong–from a contemporary anthropological point of view. That’s because anthropologists, in general, tend to have a much more dynamic, less bounded view of what culture means these days. The “culture” we hear about from folks like Brooks, and even in some of my interviews, seems to be stuck somewhere in the early part of the 20th century. So why is it that this version of culture is so prevalent? Why do we hear them so often? That’s a pretty good question. My theory: because anthropologists used to get their ideas out into the public quite a bit more, and the dominant–and very static–notion of culture that gets so much air time these days comes from the days of Boas, Mead, and Benedict. Maybe this is another reason why our ideas need to find their way outside of the halls of academia. When it comes to the idea of culture, I think the pop version could use a bit of an anthropological update. It’s about 50 years out of date if you ask me. Maybe more.