Download
1 / 66
660 likes | 664 Views
Culture. Hans Johst (often attributed to Hermann G öring) : “When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun” ( “ I release the safety catch of my Browning”). Cyril Connolly (English writer): “When I hear the word ‘gun’ I reach for my culture . ”.
E N D
Hans Johst (often attributed to Hermann Göring): “When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun” (“I release the safety catch of my Browning”)
Cyril Connolly (English writer): “When I hear the word ‘gun’ I reach for my culture.”
„I don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I’d never heard the damned word.” (Raymond Williams, British cultural theorist)
Binary oppositions (binarities, dichotomies) (kétosztatúságok) • More than mere contrast: explanatory function, covering an entire field, establishing hierarchy • subject – object (self – world) • soul (spirit) - body • essence – appearance (depth – surface, truth – lie) • male- female, sun – moon, day – night • good – evil, right – wrong • democracy – totalitarianism • individual – community, public – private • Culture - ???
Culture: its etymology colere to inhabit– colony cultivate – coulter, agriculture protect, worship – cult
I. Culture as cultivation • cultura animi - cultivation of the soul • F. Bacon: „culture and manurement of minds” • (agriculture, body culture, cell culture) • Nature+culture = fully human • nature is unfinished; culture: perfection of nature and not its opposite („cultural instructions”) • Culture as process )
II. Culture as a value-laden term 1. Culture ~ civilisation vs. barbarity, savagery, primitiveness (European idea) 2. Culture = expression of collective (national) spirit (Völkergeist, J. G. Herder) vs. „others”, aliens
World War One poster (UK, then US, 1917) On club: „Kultur” On helmet: „Militarism”
Value-laden “culture” – detached itself from material things (19th century Britain) Matthew Arnold: culture is “a study of perfection, … perfection which consists in becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit.” (Culture and Anarchy, 1869)
III. The anthropological meaning of “culture” • Late 19th cent: rise of ETHNOGRAPHY and ANTHROPOLOGY as a discipline • E. B. Tylor, James G. Fraser, Arnold Gehlen, Norbert Elias, Bronislaw Malinowski, Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clifford Geertz
Human being unable to survive in nature → puts culture between himself and nature culture = second nature (Arnold Gehlen, Norbert Elias - German anthropologists)
Anthropology and ethnography (from mid- C19) Study of “primitive” societies Small communities ~ laboratories Two conclusions 1. “primitive culture” is not really “primitive” E. B. Tylor (Vict. anthropologist): we should appreciate “the real culture which better acquaintance always shows among the rudest tribes of man” (e.g. Aborigines)
Anthropology and ethnography 2. Cultures are all different, but the fact of having a culture is a universal human feature comparative anthropology Fraser: The Golden Bough (Az aranyág)
Anthropological meaning of „culture” • broad meaning: a distinct way of life (Tylor: culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (1871) • neutral • plural: „cultures” rather than „culture” • culture: a human universal • Nature vs. culture again • Every culture is an adequate response to its environement, working well • Culture: second nature of meanings, symbols
Raymond Williams (English critic): “Culture is ordinary. …Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of society is the finding of common meanings and directions.” (1958)
T.S. Eliot: culture in the widest sense “includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage, beetroot in vinegar, nineteenth-century Gothic churches and the music of Elgar” (1944)
Ethnocentrism Eskimo – „eaters of raw meat” Pygmy – „size of a fist” Hungarian – „alliance of tribes” Apache – „enemies” Tsigan – „outcasts” (magyar, roma, dine, inuit, baka) Our own ethnos is always the standard of the normal, of the human
What it is that all cultures have in common (LCD of cultures)? Where is the boundary between nature and culture? Laws, rules Appearing as: prohibitions, taboos, ‘don’t’s ‘Two feet good,four feet bad’ (Orwell’s Animal Farm) dietary habits and fasting (no meat on Friday)
Threshold of culture • Cannibalism? • hunger cannibalism vs cultural cannibalism (mortuary, sacrificial) • Incest? • Licence of gods: quod licet Iovi non licet bovi
Francisco Goya: Saturn Devouring His Children (1819-23)
(symbolic) meaning as the thresholod of culture Clifford Geertz (US anthropologist) about the ‘winking boy’ ‘THICK DESCRIPTION’: to ‘describe’ is never enough Cultural practices as texts (a Balinese cockfight) (professional wrestling, a duel, sy beating a drum, slaughtering an animal)
Culture and meaning Culture is „webs of meaning... woven by us” (Geertz) Objects, texts, practices, institutions No meanings in nature (stones, trees)
CULTURALISM • coherence of a culture • Emile Durkheim: collective representations • Völkergeist (‘spirit of the people’) • Like cells in a body
Symbol and function • Function (use) + (symbolic) meanings • In culture, nothing (?) is exhausted by its function/use Basic human (animal) needs: eating, protecting our bodies Everything else is meaning • Meals: help define communuty • Clothes: ‘culturalising’ the body
‘Which is Adam and which is Eve?’ ‘I do not know, but I could tell if they had their clothes on.’ (Samuel Butler) gendering the body Culture and meaning
„the great renunciation” Man: serious labour, sober clothes Woman: frivolous decoration, flamboyance Rigaud: Louis XIV
19th century: Victorian boy
William Orpen: A Bloomsbury Family (1907)
Mrs. Eisenhower in pink (presidential inauguration, 1953)
Wearing jeans (the meanings of jeans) Marlboro ad
Culture and meaning ‘Which is Adam and which is Eve?’ ‘I do not know, but I could tell if they had their clothes on.’ (Samuel Butler)
Saudi athlete wearing hijab in London 2012 • Nothing is exhausted by its use value • Clothes: ‘culturalising’ the body
„the great renunciation” Man: serious labour, sober clothes Woman: frivolous decoration, flamboyance Rigaud: Louis XIV
