NO SUCH THING AS CULTURE?

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1 New cultural geographydon Mitchell Clifford Geertz Culture as semiotics James Duncan 1. Challenges to early concepts 2. Superorganicism and its critics 3. Culture as power Peter Jackson 4. Culture as a semiotic system Page 1

* Environmental adaptation through techniques can no longer explain the diversity of human presence

2 1. CULTURE AND GEOGRAPHY : CHALLENGES TO EARLY CONCEPTS i) Modernisation * The tools with which humans transform the environment are changing due to mechanisation. * Environmental adaptation through techniques can no longer explain the diversity of human presence and diffusion across the globe. * The idea of cultural centers (foyers) and diffusion is complicated by new modes of cultural transmission. Page 2

* «Ethnographic» societies are disappearing across the globe thanks to their

3 1. CULTURE AND GEOGRAPHY : CHALLENGES TO EARLY CONCEPTS ii) Urbanisation * The genre de vie approach is not quite suitable to analyse urban environments. * «Ethnographic» societies are disappearing across the globe thanks to their increasing exchanges with and presence in the the city. New analytical concepts are needed Page 3

* Beyond techniques and the resources of the environment, the ideas that people have about nature, the universe, god or other cultures has a

4 1. CULTURE AND GEOGRAPHY : CHALLENGES TO EARLY CONCEPTS iii) Discourses and representations * The ways in which people think about the world and talk about the world has an impact on the production of landscapes. * Beyond techniques and the resources of the environment, the ideas that people have about nature, the universe, god or other cultures has a material impact on the shape and use of landscapes. * These ideas also have an impact on the distribution of human societies across the earth s surface. What understanding of culture were the early schools based on? Page 4

5 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) Page 5

6 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.» Page 6

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

7 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.» Page 7

8 «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 Page 8

9 «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 Page 9

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2. CRITIQUE OF SUPERORGANICISM IN THE U.

12 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 Page 12

13 «The population of the United States does indeed form a single, large, discrete ethnic group.» Acccording to Zelinsky, the characteristics of this ethnic group are : * A rugged, almost anarchic individualism * Placing high value in mobility and change * A mechanistic vision of the world * A messianic perfectionism What is at stake in these claims? Like Vidal de la Blache, Zelinsky seeks to emphasize unity in diversity, but the context is different Page 13

14 THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT (1955) Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement How should culture be conceptualised in these changing times? Page 14

culture is seen as a material relation * Culture is determined by the economy, by consumption * Culture is the domain of ideology and,

15 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 Page 15

MAPS OF MEANING «That the cultural is political follows logically from a

recognition of the plurality of cultures.

masculine and feminine, gay and straight, urban and rural) then it is clear

16 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 Page 16

4. CULTURE AS A SEMIOTIC SYSTEM (Jim Duncan)

landscape and the pursuit of power in the city

Landscape is not only the result of «genres de

further the interests of those in power * In

form do not necessarily arise organically from

17 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 Page 17

18 Clifford Geertz ( ) 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.» Page 18

19 CULTURE : LANDSCAPE : GEOSYMBOL Page 19

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