After watching one's group ethnography presentation and then doing one myself, I started thinking about what exactly defines a culture. This question came during the presentation about the Davenport Coffee Lounge and whether or not the group members considered "Davvers" to be a culture. But what is this elusive word?
It's a word we throw around a lot in class. Martin and Nakayama define it as "learned patterns of behavior and attitudes shared by a group of people".
So, by this definition, nearly anything can be a culture, right? Do the people walking on the sidewalk in Manhattan in rush hour constitute a culture? For the most part, they all walk at a similar pace and value getting places quickly. They use similar mannerisms (i.e. the hand motion used to hail a taxi) and are generally stereotyped as "typical New Yorkers". In class, Professor Hayden discussed how people immediately pegged him as a California native, implying that people from the area display certain behaviors and mannerisms, which is essentially a simplistic definition of culture. Most people, however, would not consider such a widespread, disconnected group like this a culture.
In class, we discussed the different cultures of the schools at American University (i.e. the difference between an SIS student and a Kogod student). I can definitely buy that argument, but I've heard from some people who, for example, consider University College programs "cults". Is a cult a culture? Are the people who go to clubs and frat parties a culture? The list of possibilities is endless.
As this class (and unfortunately, this blog) comes to a close, I realize that there are things that I simply don't know. I have my own personal views on what constitutes a culture, but it is impossible to create a universal definition that can apply to every situation/circumstance. It's not an easy answer but it's the truth.
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I know exactly what you mean. My group had a hard time choosing a group to do our ethnography on and that was partly because culture is so hard to define. I think with the right arguments, you can pretty much call anything a culture. But there's probably degrees of culture. Like there's some kind of culture continuum out there. Some ethnographer is saying "Well new yorkers are a 9 on the culture scale, but cults are a 15." Or something.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with you that anything can be a culture, or we can say culture is everything. You also pointed out that the constitutes a culture can applky to every situation and circumstance. So as I understand that every culture has its own constitutes, because culture as an integral part of human life. Therefore, it is not easy to define it even when we spent our time to observed the group of culture such as concerning to our project with ethnographer presentation 2 weeks ago in the class. We still could not figure it out all of what we should need to focus on and how to have all our concepts to describe it.
ReplyDeleteIn all honestly Thomas, I think everybody is asking the same question. Yet, we all have our own definitions of cultures. For example you brought up Prof. Hayden and how they pegged him as a Californian, yet if someone was to ask me, I would have no idea. But if I heard someone with a thick Southern accent I could pinpoint them as coming from the South. My point being, is that if you have not lived in that specific culture, then you might not see all the minute details that makes an east coast guy different from the one on the west. So, although Martin and Nakayama define it as "learned patterns of behavior and attitudes shared by a group of people", you would have to have prior knowledge and awarness of those patterns.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I agree with allisonarlotta in that “there are probably degrees of culture”. If you were to consider it a hierarchy cult would be under culture, because “going to frats” is not enough of a description to consider it a culture. Yet if these people going to the frat all listened to the same genre of music, and dressed the same and had their own slang, could they then be considered a culture?
I would have to agree with all the previous points above. And honestly this topic of conversation would be hard to exhaust, but these are all valid points. We perceive things based off of a definition that we are familiar with. It IS all about how we define things and I know that I have experienced that in other classes, for instance, my IR research class, we are always trying to define any word brought up because if I were to do a research project on how civil war affects children, people have different ideas of a civil war.
ReplyDeleteI know for myself in regards to culture, I am content with the idea Martin and Nakayama present. And in an example you point out, Thomas, of the people in Manhattan at rush hour constituting as a culture, I would say yes. I think that when there is an appreciation among people for various acts, the culture is then bound and created. But like we have all been saying, it is important to define things when we are making observations or points in a conversation.
I think everyone makes a good point about defining culture. I think the ambiguity of it caused a lot of the groups to have trouble trying to figure out if their subject is in fact a culture. I agree with you Thomas that by going with the Martin and Nakayama definition almost everything can be identified as a culture. No matter what definition you use to identify a culture, I think it would be hard to really recognize a culture without already knowing their characteristics. Like the point Maria brings up, I wouldn't have thought Professor Hayden was from California either just by meeting him. I agree with Maria that you have to be somewhat familiar with that culture to be able to identify someone who is part of it, which I believe also contributed to the difficulty of our ethnographies. Even though everyone has different opinions about what might constitute a culture, I like Laura, think there should be a rather universal definition for culture that everyone can agree on in situations like these.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comments about the difficulties of truly defining cultural groups. It's easy to apply it to a situation, as hongha said. I know with my group in particular, as we did tourists of the National Mall for our presentation, it was hard to pinpoint exactly how to define a tourist. In our group, many of us had visited the National Mall with family or friends before, yet since we live here it's hard to consider ourselves as tourists, even though that's exactly what we were. I agree with the above comments about 'degrees of culture' because in our case, this culture that we found wasnt as prominent as other more well known cultures, but we still we able to make the arguement that we had found some type of tourist culture.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the idea that it is hard to define what a culture is and who makes one up. The definition seems to broad and general for my taste but I certainly can't come up with one on my own. I think that the definition of culture varies on the context. I also think that an important part of making a culture is that the people who would be considered as part of the group see themselves as a culture.
ReplyDeleteWould the typical New Yorker identify themselves as part of the rush hour traffic culture? I don't think they would but they might identify themselves as a part of a Manhattan culture. I think what really matters when defining a culture is the idea that the members see themselves as a cohesive group, as a culture.