Marcus Ohlström, Växjö University, Sweden, Mapping the Goods of Culture
In Liberalism, Community, and Culture, Will Kymlicka (1989) argued that egalitarian
liberals ought to pay greater attention to the well-being of societal cultures. Not because
cultures are intrinsically valuable or in some other way more important than the
individuals constituting a cultural group, but because our societal culture provides us
with a context of choice suggesting different ways of life and ascribing those different
lives with meaning. For it is, or so Kymlicka argues, through the examples given by our
culture that the various ways of life are explained and rendered vivid to us; it is the
stories we are told and the roles we see others adopt that makes the different possible
lives more than merely “different patterns of physical movements”. Whether we accept
or reject the roles suggested to us by our culture is a wholly different matter, what is
important for Kymlicka’s argument is that “it’s only through having a rich and secure
cultural structure that people can become aware, in a vivid way, of the options available
to them, and intelligently examine their value” (1989: 165) and that our societal cultures
therefore “seems crucial to personal agency and development: when the individual is
stripped of her cultural heritage, her development becomes stunted” (Kymlicka 1989:
176). Access to a viable societal culture is therefore a necessary precondition for our
ability to choose good lives for ourselves. Not by defining what the good life is, but as a
context of choice providing meaning to the different ways of life that are available to us.
Kymlicka does however stop short of explaining how we as individual beings relate to
the goods provided by our cultures. Being rooted in the liberal tradition, Kymlicka would
most certainly agree that what ultimately matters is how we as individuals relate to our
societal cultures, but his focus on entire cultural entities and their significance can not
account for this. Living within a flourishing societal culture might be a necessary
condition for my ability to make well-informed and truly autonomous choices, but it is
not a sufficient condition. Somehow, the knowledge, experience, and wisdom inherent in
my societal culture—true or false, good or bad— must be transferred to me as an
individual being. Only then, only when I become aware of the roles ascribed by my
social context and of their meaning and only when I realize that there are different ways
to live my life, only then can I make a free and informed choice whether to accept or
reject the roles ascribed by my culture. The aim of this paper is to provide this missing
link, or, more specifically, to specify how we as individuals relate to these goods of
culture and how the contexts of choice provided by our societal cultures are presented to
us. In the next section, two aspects of these goods of culture are identified and
Kymlicka’s distinction between cultural characters and cultural structures is introduced.
Also, it is argued that in the light of one of the two aspects identified Kymlicka must—
contrary to what he himself claims—concern himself with cultural characters rather than
with cultural structures. In the third section it is shown, drawing on a distinction relied
upon by linguists and anthropologists, that Kymlicka is concerned with cultural
acquisition rather than with cultural learning. Thereafter, in section four, it is suggested
that due to how we acquire culture, even those living within the same cultural
community might have access to different cultures, or rather to different understandings
of their culture. In section five, finally, it is however argued that since the goods of
culture is a sufficitarian good—not an egalitarian good which Kymlicka’s argument
might lead us to believe—this still does not give rise to any within-group considerations
of justice. Culture as a primary good – definitions, distinctions, and an analytical gap
Borrowing the language of John Rawls, Kymlicka suggests that culture should be
regarded as a primary good, i.e. as something “that every rational man is presumed to
want” whatever else he wants from life (Rawls 1999: 54). 1 This is for two reasons. First
and foremost, as has already been mentioned, a societal culture provides its members
with a context of choice, suggesting “meaningful ways of life across the full range of
human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational, and economic life,
encompassing both public and private spheres” (Kymlicka 1995: 76). But societal
cultures promote a sense of belonging, self-respect, and identity too, and should
therefore, Kymlicka argues, be regarded as “a source of emotional security and personal
strengths” that may boost our motivational forces and even “affect our very sense of
agency” (Kymlicka 1989: 175-76; cf. Kymlicka 1995: 89-90). Culture, then, is crucial
both to our substantive freedom to act; it broadens our imagination by suggesting
alternative lives and providing those lives with meaning, as well as to our capacity and
will to act; it strengthens our sense of our own worth as well as our convictions that our
autonomously chosen life plans are worth carrying out. This, Kymlicka suggests,
everyone should want for themselves no matter what else they want from life. Culture,
therefore, should be regarded as a primary good and consequently be included in the list
of goods which are to be distributed (roughly) equal within a given society. This of
course warrants a definition of culture. Kymlicka is concerned not with high or low
culture and neither with voluntarily formed sub-cultures, but with societal cultures. A
societal culture is based on a shared language, on history, and on traditions—language
being the core of these (Kymlicka 1989: 135, 1995: 76), and it is propagated trough
linguistic and historical processes (Kymlicka 1989: 165). Kymlicka furthermore stresses
the importance to distinguish cultural characters from cultural1
The second role of culture, that of providing a sense of belonging, self-respect, and
identity, fits better with the concept of cultural structures. This aspect I will however set
aside with only a few short remarks. Not because it is of less importance, but because (a)
it is analytically less challenged—the good of belonging and identity formation fits
rather well with the concept of groups—and because (b) it is a much to big issue to be
dealt with within the limits of this paper (in addition it is not directly related to the aim
of this paper, but that is, admittedly, not a very good reason for exclusion). But I can’t
help pointing out that even if we do accept with Kymlicka that we all share a need to
belong it is far from evident that what we need to belong to is a cultural group. Some
support for Kymlicka’s position can be found in the writings of communitarians such as
Charles Taylor (1994) and Michael Sandel (1998)—although Kymlicka points out how
his argument distinguishes itself from those put forth by communitarians (Kymlicka
1995: 91). Other writers, for example Iris Marion Young (1990), has argued that our
primary source of identity and emotional strength flows not from society as a whole but
from societal sub-groups, and John Rawls departs even further from this claim for
culture, suggesting that what a person needs in order to secure a firm sense of his own
Rawls’ own list of primary goods includes rights, liberties, opportunities, income, wealth, vigor,
intelligence, and imagination. While it is not self-evident that the roles and functions of Rawls’
imagination would not encompass those of Kymlicka’s culture as a context of choice, Rawls actually leaves
that to the reader’s own imagination. He barely touches upon the primary good of imagination again and
when he does it is for other purposes than those that are of concern here.
1
worth and to boost his motivational forces is to belong to “some association (one or
more) [...] within which the activities that are rational for him are publicly affirmed by
others” (Rawls 1999: 387). Jeremy Waldron finally, and in a direct response to
Kymlicka, questions the concept of societal cultures itself, claiming that there are no
such things as distinct cultural entities but only a multitude of cultural fragments coming
from all corners of the world, and hence that there are no distinct cultural structures to
which we can belong but only a multitude of associations and social arenas available for
us to enter and exit throughout our lives (Waldron 1995). In short, while the idea that we
need to belong seems to be widely accepted, there certainly is no wide consensus as to
what we need to belong to and Kymlicka’s suggestion is only one of many possibilities.
However, since his original contribution is not this need to belong but rather the notion
of cultures as contexts of choice, this aspect of the goods of culture will be set aside with
only the shorts remarks just made. Back to cultures as contexts of choice, then. While
survival of the cultural structure might be a necessary condition for the continued
existence of a rich variety of cultural material, and while we therefore might have a
moral duty to secure this continued existence (cf. Dworkin 1985: 221-33), it is the
cultural material itself that we, as individual beings, gain from—not the structure. If we
are to bring the goods of culture down to the individual, we ought therefore to bring the
concept of cultural characters back.
Getting culture
Since the ’70s anthropologists interested in cultural transmission have distinguished
between cultural acquisition and cultural learning. The terminology originates from
linguistics, where, in the words of Harry Wolcott, language acquisition is understood as
“processes of interaction through which one acquires a feeling for a whole language
system,” while language learning “refers to self-conscious processes involving error
correction and the presentation of explicit rules.” The distinguishing world were we are
all capable to live autonomously, were we are free to move within our culture, distance
ourselves from particular cultural roles, and create for ourselves the life that we find
valuable (Kymlicka 1995: 90-91). In words Kymlicka has borrowed from Avishai
Margalit and Joseph Raz, our culture “determines the boundaries of the imaginable”
(Margalit and Raz 1990: 449, quoted in Kymlicka 1995: 89), and for us to achieve a
sense of this imaginable we need precisely the “feeling for the whole” that marks out
acquisition. We need to be able to see, understand, and grasp not only the lives that have
already been lived by others before us, but also those who can be lived. Hence, off
primary importance for our possibility to choose good lives for ourselves is the sense for
our culture that we acquire rather than learn. That is not to say that learning is of no
importance; our acquired culture is perhaps best understood as a (more or less) stable
base from which we can refine, reinterpret, and recreate our understanding of the world.
And this we can do by conscious learning or by unconscious acquisition as our life
continues and we move on and involve ourselves in new social arenas, thereby getting
familiar with new interpretations of our shared cultural heritage. But it is meant to say
that lack of proper cultural acquisition cannot be easily replaced by or compensated for
by cultural learning, at least not without imposing tremendous costs upon those who
have been cheated of their chance to acquire their culture (Quong 2006: 55). Thus,
cultural acquisition is of crucial importance for the argument put forth by Kymlicka. It is
not everything, but it is a foundational building block of Kymlicka’s theory.
Different cultures within
Children of young age acquire their culture primarily through parental socialization
(Sabatier 2008: 189-90). Older children and adolescents acquire from family in general,
from peer groups, and from school (Pierik 2004: 533). Post-adolescents and adults,
finally, acquire culture too, but not only do adult enculturation seem to be a more
complex process than enculturation of youngsters, it is not as well-documented either. It
seems, however, that peer groups remain the most important source of cultural influence
even for adults, although schools have been replaced by other social arenas in our near
proximity, such as work, voluntary associations of various kinds, soccer teams, etc
(Aunger 2000: 449; Durkin 1995: 595-630). Throughout our entire life the dominant
source for cultural acquisition do therefore—to no surprise, I am sure—seem to be
people in our near proximity. Hence, for us to acquire culture properly, we need to be
surrounded by peoples from whom we can acquire. That is not to say that we can not
learn culture in other ways, but to acquire culture, we need peers with whom we can
interact and from whom we can acquire. Thus, not only do we need to ‘belong’ to a rich
and flourishing societal culture, we need to interact with people from whom we can
acquire that culture too. Cultures are however not fixed pre-socially, but interpreted and
also shaped by those living and expressing them, and this opens up for the possibility
that people ‘belonging’ to the same cultural community might not have the same access
to their culture. For although an essential aspect of our cultures are that they are shared
and that they therefore allow us to function in society, to understand one another, we
cannot expect that everyone who shares them do understand them in the same way, of
even that each and every individual in a cultural community share all the relevant
traditions, practices, and understandings composing their culture. And from this follows
that what we acquire is not something called ‘our culture’, but rather an interpretation of
that culture. Our contexts of choice are therefore, contrary to what has been claimed
above, not a cultural character, but an interpretation of a cultural character. Now, there
are certainly strong reasons to assume that people do not interpret their shared culture in
radically different ways, but there are equally strong reasons that, at least at occasions,
we do interpret the publicly shared meanings slightly or perhaps even significantly
different (Stjernberg 1991; Tersman 1993: 94-114). If there are substantially different
understandings of ‘our culture’ in a given society and if people acquire their
understanding of their culture from some and not from all, then people would therefore
have access to different cultural characters even though they belong to the same cultural
structure. Thus, a necessary precondition for our ability to lead our lives autonomously is
our access to a shared culture, but we cannot take for granted that we all have access to
the same culture, even if we live within the same cultural community.
We can therefore assume that there are differences within cultures too, not only between
them as claimed by Kymlicka when developing his ideas into a full-fledged theory of
liberal multiculturalism (Kymlicka 1995). Whether these differences give rise to
considerations of justice is however another matter. That people are fed with— or
initially acquire—different understandings or their cultures do not necessarily imply that
they end up endorsing different understandings, or that they end up getting a feeling for
different wholes of their culture. On the contrary, if we accept the roles ascribed to our
cultures by Kymlicka, then—as I will try to show in the next section—we can assume
that these inequalities do not give rise to considerations of justice.
Culture as a sufficitarian good
Even when people belong to the same cultural structure, they do therefore not
necessarily have access to the same cultural character, and, as I argued above, what
ultimately matters is not the quality of the structure to which we ‘belong’ but the cultural
character that is actually available to us. That we do not have access to the same cultural
character need however not imply that some are unjustly worse off than others. Whether
they are depends on whether we consider justice to demand equality (Arneson 2002),
sufficiency (Frankfurt 1987), or priority (Parfit 1997), that is, whether we should strive
for equal distribution of the relevant goods, or for everyone to have a sufficient access to
these goods, or that priority should always be given to those worse off, no matter
whether everyone has reached a certain threshold of sufficiency or not (see Mason 2006
for an exhaustive discussion of these matters).
When we turn away from the concept of cultural structures and towards that of cultural
characters, Kymlicka’s claim for ‘equal access to culture’ can reasonably not be read as
an egalitarian claim anymore. In the words of Kymlicka, we do have a moral duty to
ensure equal access to ‘a rich and flourishing cultural structure’, but not to an equally
flourishing cultural structure. What everyone should be ensured equal access to is
sufficiently flourishing cultures, nothing else. And just as Ronald Dworkin does when
discussing culture in monocultural societies, an argument to which Kymlicka refers
when building his own case, Kymlicka seems to assume that the dominant cultures of the
developed societies of today already do flourish sufficiently (cf. Dworkin 1985: 221-33).
No efforts need therefore to be made to improve the richness of our cultures; our moral
duties require that we do not let our cultures wither and die or in some other way become
substantially poorer, but they do not require us to make our cultures even richer. Those
worse off are not worse off because they belong to a less flourishing societal culture, but
because they belong to one that doesn’t flourish at all or at least not to a sufficient
degree.
This has substantial bearing on how we understand within-group differences too. If
culture is a sufficitarian good and if we assume with Kymlicka that we live in
(reasonably) liberal and open societies, then it seems implausible that members of rich
and flourishing cultures could fall below the threshold of sufficiency—that their access
to ‘their own culture’ could be so severely restrained that they can be said to suffer an
injustice in this respect. Perhaps a few marginal cases could be identified, the children
locked up in Amstetten springs to mind, but those children and others being severely
marginalized do already suffer from other much graver injustices (and indeed, to argue
that they suffer from lack of proper access to their culture would be insulting, at best).
But should cultural goods be regarded as sufficitarian goods even at the level of the
individual? I think so. Remember that what matters is not that we know of all the
opportunities there are or of every single life that has been lived before us, but that we
should acquire ‘a sense of the whole’, that we should be capable to live as autonomous
agents in our own society, capable to grasp the whole of society and to decide for
ourselves how we are to lead our lives. Certainly, we might be even better off if we do
have an even more intimate knowledge of our culture, but that should not necessarily be
considered as a matter of justice, but rather as a matter of individual choice. Once we
have reached a sufficient level of cultural awareness and thereby the level of autonomous
capability necessary to lead our own life and take responsibility for the choices we make,
we are free to choose for ourselves if we are to gain an even deeper knowledge of our
culture or not. Hence, that we acquire different understandings of our culture, as I
suggested in the last section, does not necessarily amount to a matter of justice, although
it might point to an inequality.
Conclusion
Admittedly, much work remains and so far only tentative conclusions can be drawn.
Nonetheless, two things are worth pointing out. First, that Kymlicka’s own
conceptualization of the goods of culture as membership in a viable and flourishing
cultural structure does not make sense at the level of the individual. What matters is
cultural material drawn from the cultural structures to which we ‘belong’, not the
structures themselves. A focus on cultural material or cultural characters does however
not fit very well with Kymlicka’s theory of multiculturalism (Kymlicka 1995), since it
would (according to Kymlicka himself) bring with it just the stroke of conservatism that
would make it inherently anti-liberal—contrary to Kymlicka’s articulated ambitions.
Whether or not this analytical gap can be bridged is too early to say. It should
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