NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
Jim Duncan
University of Cambridge
2. CRITIQUE : THE SUPERORGANIC APPROACH TO CULTURE
*
Culture belongs to human groups, not individuals
*
Culture, as an entity, stands above individuals
*
The whole, not the part, is the determining factor in culture
« The superorganic mode of explanation in cultural geography reifies the notion
of culture assigning it ontological status and causative power. This theory of
culture was outlined by anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie during
the first quarter of the twentieth century, later elaborated by Leslie White, and
passed on to Carl Sauer and a number of his students at Berkeley. In this theory
culture is viewed as an entity above man, not reducible to the actions of
individuals, mysteriously responding to laws of its own. Explanation, it is
claimed must be phrased in terms of the cultural level not in terms of
individuals. »
The Superorganic in American Cultural Geography (1980)
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
2. CRITIQUE : CULTURE IS TREATED AS « BLACK BOX »
3 major consequences…
i) Environmental determinism is replaced with cultural determinism
Ii) Culture seems much more homogenous than it really is:
« The favorite image of the romantic ethnographer is a seamless
superorganic unit within whose collective embrace the individual simply
disappears into a cloud of mystic harmony. »
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
2. CRITIQUE : CULTURE IS TREATED AS « BLACK BOX »
3 major consequences…
iii) This perspective results in a reification of culture:
« In short the world described by the cultural geographers is a world in
which the individual is largely absent, consensus prevails, deviance
is ignored; it is a world untouched by intracultural conflict. »
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
« REIFICATION » : WHAT IS IT?
Literally « objectification », turning something into an object
or an abstraction. Reification involves separating out
something from the original context in which it occurs, and
placing it in another context, in which it lacks some or all of its
original connections yet seems to have powers or attributes
which in truth it does not have.
In Marxism, implies the « thingification » of social relations,
i.e., the nature of social relationships is expressed by the
relationships between traded objects (commodity fetishism).
Reification of culture leads to stereotyping…
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
« The stereotype is a printer's aid. This one-piece plate,
cast in type metal from a mold taken of a printing
surface, produces an unvarying form or pattern,
having no individuality. It speeds the process of
producing printed material.
People use stereotyping to speed up thought
processes in their daily lives - only they use a cognitive
matrix instead of type metal. They attribute a set of
complex characteristics to individuals they barely
know on the basis of preconceived notions. This
saves time anticipating the conduct of others - or their
responses to ideas and actions. »
Jeffrey Singer, “Making sense of stereotypes”
www.fff.org/freedom/0400f.asp
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
2. CRITIQUE OF SUPERORGANICISM IN THE U.S. : HISTORICAL CONTEXT
« What can a reading of the spatial dimensions of American culture contribute to
the unfinished chore of explaining this mighty,
dynamic outpost of mankind’s future. »
Wilbur Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the Unites States
(Prentice Hall 1973), p. 3
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
Don Mitchell
Syracuse University
3. CULTURE AS POWER
There is no such thing as culture (Transactions of the British Institute
of Geographers 1995)
* A marxist approach : culture is seen as a material relation
* Culture is determined by the economy, by consumption
* Culture is the domain of ideology and, often, hegemony (it
reflects the values and ideas of the dominant class)
This approach was strongly inspired by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
(CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, England which was founded by Richard
Hoggart en 1964.
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
MAPS OF MEANING
« That the cultural is political follows
logically from a rejection of the traditional
notion of a unitary view of ‘culture’, and
from a recognition of the plurality of
cultures. If cultures are addressed in the
plural (high and low, black and white,
masculine and feminine, gay and straight,
urban and rural) then it is clear that
meanings will be contested according to
the interests of those involved. »
Peter Jackson, Maps of Meaning, p. 4
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
4. CULTURE AS A SEMIOTIC SYSTEM
(Jim Duncan)
Duncan analyses the relationship between landscape
and the pursuit of power in the city of Kandy (Sri Lanka)
in the 19th century…
* Landscape is not only the result of « genres de vie »
* Landscape can be consciously produced to further the
interests of those in power
* In this perspective, architecture and the built form do
not necessarily arise organically from genres de vie but
can be used to materialise ideologies and beliefs
NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?
INTERCULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
ARUC TETAUAN – COMITÉ PARITAIRE ESSIPIT
THE « NEW » CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
Clifford Geertz
(1926-2006)
4. CULTURE AS A SEMIOTIC SYSTEM
Thick description: toward and interpretive theory of culture (1973)
* Culture is public because meaning is
* Culture is not a common structure of behaviour but a common structure of
communication
* Cultural (anthropological) analysis therefore is a matter of “leaning to
converse with other.” We are trying to “find our feet”…
« There is an Indian story —at least I heard it as an Indian story— about an
Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on
the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he
was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another
turtle. And that turtle? “Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all theway down. »