Skip to main content

Precis + Critical Response Paper: " The politicization of ' culture' " (1998)


The Problematic Nature of Culture
(October 10, 2019)

In Susan Wright’s article “The politicization of ‘culture’” (1998), she argues that t the prominence (or distribution) of culture in the 1990’s as itself a cultural phenomenon (7). She does so by dividing her argument into two phases: firstly, to briefly discuss and differentiate the so called ‘old’ and ‘new’ anthropological approaches to culture; and secondly, to use these approaches in examining the resulting interaction and effects undertaken by decision-makers (such as politicians, the media, the academia, etc.) to use culture in three areas: namely, in the case of culture as a means to promote nationalism; culture, through an anthropological lens and method to create new forms of organizations and organization cultures; and lastly, concerning international developments regarding culture as it (at around the time of her writing) was vastly entering the International discourse as a result of the UNESCO report “Our Creative Diversity” (7). This was significant in order to understand the role of important decision-makers, as well as, anthropologists in the creation of a mythic definition of ‘culture’ which resulted in the politicization of the term and its functions.

Regarding her first section, Wright manages to clearly define what she considers as “old” and “new” anthropological approaches to culture by categorizing the former as part of the colonial discourses and legacies, and the latter as part of the discourses on post-colonial, post-structural, new movements, feminism, etc. By framing them this way, she creates a timeline of the development of the applications, of competing arguments and salient debates that continued to shape the scholarship. In this way, culture as defined would also be depicted on its historical changes, significance and purpose. Thus, when the old approach had isolated culture as something bound, defined and unchanging, the new approach allowed culture to be understood as something other than naturally bound entities and as something as fluid and ever changing.

In her second section, beginning with the use of culture in the face of nationalism, a historical description of the changing definition of culture in Britain was used as an example of how problematic it could lead if culture is politicize to the point of instructing and prescribing what is nationalism. This was due, in part, to the tendency for culture to be defined and used by the hegemonic rule, to which the minorities and the Others would otherwise be excluded from or taken advantage on. Moving on, the notion of culture within an organization, started in the early 1980’s as culture became a buzz word in management studies with concepts of excellent companies possessing ‘strong culture’ (11), thus, in turn, to redefine the word as something equal to a company’s policy or mission statement. This particular assumption is still relevant today, particularly with one of management/corporate’s influential concept of the “Way of Toyota” or what was supposed to be a collective idealization of what made the industry of Toyota into a car-manufacturing giant that rose through the bubble economy. And finally, the third part of the section regards the position of culture and its role in the international stage. Here, culture seems to refer to the distinctive cultural identities that make up each nation or people, and by propagating these ideas, use culture as a basis for international relationships, as well as, internal/national developments that would have otherwise undermined/ignored these communities.

In conclusion, because culture is a fluid concept, not merely an entity, and has been changing by definition, scope and purpose over the years, it would be foolish to think that there is a universal concept of culture with a one-size-fits-all significance. And as established in the article, culture is continuously being reshaped, not only by anthropologists, but by other important decision-makers and even grassroots level communities, that it is impossible to completely divorce the notion from any biases and political stance– for man, himself is political.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bibliography: " Game Design as Narrative Architecture" (2004) by Henry Jenkins

Jenkins, Henry. 2004. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game , edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 118–30. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. In this article, Jenkins examines games less as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility. He list downs the characteristics of games as defined by current Ludology versus Narratology debates such as: (1) not all games tell stories but they do have narrative aspirations, follows genre entertainment and previous narrative experiences; (2) narrative analysis need not be prescriptive; (3) games should not be reduced to the experience of a story; and (4) if games tell stories, they are unlikely to tell them in the same ways that other media tell stories for games as a medium, specifically, is what distinguishes them from other narrative traditions. He also lists down the problems and limitations within the current game study discourses, often pointing out how ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Precis + Critical Response Paper: " The Imaginary" (2006) Chapter 1 part 1 by Claudia Strauss

Reevaluating Scholarships (October 17, 2019) In Claudia Strauss’s article “The Imaginary” (2006), she gives a detailed discussion and analysis of the major scholarships in cultural studies regarding the matter of the Imaginaries, such as the works of Castoriadis, Lacan, Anderson, and Taylor, in order to map out the essential arguments that are more popularly being used/cited in cultural studies research, before she examines how Ivy uses these concepts with regard to the national-imaginaries with the Japanese socio-cultural sphere. In summary, Strauss explains that Castoriadis was concerned with "concepts of cultural abstraction, reification and homogenization, while Lacan used the concept of the imaginary to explain fantasies, and Anderson and Taylor used the concept for explaining cultural models as potentially valuable when used with person-centered ethnographic methods to study real rather than abstract cultural subjects” (323). Despite the summation of the the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Precis: "The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo" (1998) by Inoue Shun

In Inoue Shun’s “The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo” (1998), Inoue explores the modern invention, and subsequent reinvention, of the Japanese martial arts by an examination of Kodokan judo (163). This is done through a detailed discussion of Kano’s decision and active participation of creating the new martial arts such as: conception, process of modernization through scientification of the martial arts, promotions and competitions, institutionalizations and adoptions into various agencies (government institutions, universities, etc.), establishment of the Kodokan Cultural Association (promotion of the basic principles of Kodokan judo as well as serving as a legitimate infrastructure and governing body that actively promotes the new martial arts ideology), its inevitable re-invention post-Kano years by the Dai Nihon Butokukai (leading to an ultranationalistic role), and finally, a return to the sportification of budo post-WW2 in order to escape censorship wh...
Post a Comment
Read more