What is culture?
Usually when people ask the question about what constitutes culture, they start naming various cultural artifacts or manifestations: food, art, customs, religion, and in a group of potential translators, of course language will come up. And in some sense all of these are of course true.
Yet it seems to me that they can all be considered as representations of culture rather than culture in its essence. I tend not to be an essentialist in general anyway, so I could easily dismiss the notion that we had to find a "center," or essence, that we could call culture per se. Perhaps it would be enough just to call culture any or all of its specific representations.
But I am tempted by a metaphor or model which is influenced by the physical sciences. Culture can be seen as a force which connects individuals and groups to other individuals and groups and/or to the physical environment. In this way it could be compared to the force of gravity in the physical world. But that is not all: this same cultural "force" also repels individuals and groups from others and/or the environment.
Think of how language both unites those speaking the same language and divides those not sharing a common tongue. So maybe the better example is the physical force of magnetism. Here we have both a force which attracts under the right conditions, and also repels under other sufficient conditions. But while opposites attract when dealing with magnetic forces, and objects with the same magnetic properties repel one another, with culture it is sameness which attracts and (perceived) oppositeness which (usually) repels.
Social psychologists have for a long time noticed the tendency not only for in-group preference, but for the tendency for group formation (attraction) to take place by defining what the group is NOT vis-a-vis other groups (the repellent force). And one of the basic emotions shared by humans, disgust, is often the means for cultural differentiation ("They eat dogs/cows/pigs/grasshoppers/etc.? That's disgusting! We would never do that!").
So what do you think? Is this a useful model or not? And what might it have to do with translation? I welcome your comments.
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Thanks, Bob, for your thoughtful question. Today I was reading a book by Marvin Carlson entitled "Performance: a critical introduction." In the opening page he begins by acknowledging what others have said about the term performance: "an essentially contested concept." He references W.B. Gallie's "Philosophy and the Historical Understanding" (1964) as where this notion of "essentially contested concept" was first explored. Part of what is meant is that performance will always mean a variety of things to people, depending on their approach to it. I think "culture" is also "an essentially contested concept." And not surprisingly, I think "translation" is another "essentially contested concept." In my mind, this is what you are suggesting with culture and as we often do with such contested concepts, we look to metaphors. Gravity, and even more attractive (no pun intended), magnetism seems to be a very helpful way to look at culture.
Interesting metaphor, Bob. It feels similar to me to positing a LAD (language acquisition device) suggested by Chomsky. But many linguists found that suggesting a LAD and mathematical-like rules did not adequately account for the richness of language in context. Approaches to language which focus more on communicative and social functions seem to account for more days but at a cost of greater messiness in descriptions of rules, patterns, etc. I think part of the issue has been defining language as a "box" smaller than language often actually functions. I'm wondering if something similar is going on in the attempt to define culture. We can recognize that defining culture mostly in terms of artifacts is not adequate. Yet an essentialist approach may be too minimalist. It might be too small of a box to account for the richness of culture. I feel intuitively that culture and language are somehow part of how humans and other higher level organisms work. Yes, work is also an inadequate metaphor in this case. What I'm trying to get at is that the richness of language and culture as well as all behavior, I assume, are somehow connected to our cognitive processes. They are not something separate, other, from the biological and cognitive processes. We may be able to account for language and culture in evolutionary terms, such as what kinds of symbols and relationships among living beings allow for them to communicate, protect what is similar for survival, etc. Wayne
Your models or metaphors all work, I think. Culture increases the fitness of Homo sapiens. What is learnt is stored and transferred to the next generation. So Language, biblical text etc., is instrumental in the wider course of cultural evolution. The Biblical text is full of paradigmata.
Though I and others have written quite a lot about culture and posted it on MAP (just type "culture" into the search box), this particular line of reasoning (culture seen as a social force analogous to physical forces such as gravity or magnetism) I am only now pursuing. So what is in the post and in the comment thread is all there is currently. I intend to follow it up sooner or later, along with some other metaphors ("harmonic resonance" for translation, for example). Meanwhile, I find the discussion here stimulating and enriching. You are welcome to comment on what has been written so far. I hope the collaboration on MAP will lead to something more substantive in the not-to-distant future.,
Alan Howell has written an interesting paper on biblical metaphors that work better among some culture than others (for instance, the atonement as a “Christus Victor” metaphor in animistic cultures (http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs\_IJFM/26\_3\_PDFs/26\_3\_Howell.pdf). He uses the image of a kaleidoscope to describe the unity and commonality of the atonement metaphors, but the image could just as well apply to the whole concept of cultures in describing the unity as well as the variations. What do you think? Is there unity in the variations? Certainly the arrival of the gospel creates a kind of unity in this kaleidoscope. Just as culture unites and divides, the gospel certainly creates a new unity that did not exist before while at the same time allowing for the continued variations. So perhaps culture is the wonderful variation in expression that God has ordained for bringing glory to himself, and is rich in the many facets of understanding who He is that could not be understood apart from the many cultures (languages) he has ordained.
Bob, I like the metaphors you use of both gravity and magnetism. Certainly culture both attracts (the insiders) and repels (the outsiders), and the distinction of insider-outsider is significant in defining identity. I'm wondering if it is possible to evolve beyond the small group at all. When you don't know someone you cant' really tell if they are insider or outsider; you have to use rather superficial criteria like skin color, clothing and overt behaviors. But then, these criteria are not so superficial when considered culturally. Culture is so affective. The disgust of what others do comes from the emotional part of us that helps connect us with the other insiders. With larger groups it is hard to maintain this emotional connectedness.
Janet, You may well be right, though I hope we can deal with the resulting fragmentation of humanity better in the future than we have up to the present. As I said to Krijn, neuroscientists claim that humans cannot maintain significant relationships with more that 150 other individuals, based on the number of neurons in our pre-frontal cortex (other apes can maintain only about 80 close relationships). Most of us have far fewer significant relationships, but we have managed to cobble together larger associations, even up to the level of nation-states and at times beyond. But of course meaningful cultural clusters are usually much smaller, for better and worse. So what does this mean for Christianity, with its core value of inclusion (if we can agree about that)? This value is expressed not just by "love your neighbor," but by "love your enemy." But now I am commenting on another post ("Are there moral/spiritual universals in biblical cultures?") even more than on this one. https://map.bloomfire.com/groups/28732/posts/1065232-are-there-moral-spiritual-universals-in-biblical-cultures