File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2002/bhaskar.0208, message 16


Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 10:26:00 -0500 (CDT)
From: viren viven murthy <vvmurthy-AT-midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: Culture as structure


Hi Tobin,

Your comment touches on a often debated question in anthropology.  Sewell
has an article in a volume  <<Beyond the Cultural Turn>> ed. Lynn Hunt,
where he defines the term culture in relation to structure.  He basically
says that we should think of culture as both system and practice.  I am
not sure whether he would agree with your remark that culture consists of
many structures, but he does say that in any given society there are many
cultural structures and many of them may have sub-structures
(sub-cultures). He would not recognize your distinction between cultural
structures and social structures, since in his view, cultural structures
are always also social structures.  Hence he does want to affirm the
primacy of the social, but this does not imply necessarily subordinating
culture to some other structure.  So for example, although he claims to
follow Marxists in claiming that capitalism is the fundamental organizing
principle of the modern world, he immediately adds that capitalism
consists of a number of cultural structures (e.g. legal frameworks,
visions of the human being etc.).  

Your comments seem to be more in line with people like Adam Kuper, who
tries to argue that we should get rid of the concept of culture, because
it really refers to a number of different things.  Sewell's article was
written in response to this trend and tries to clearly demarcate the
contours of the concept of culture.

Best,

Viren

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Tobin Nellhaus wrote:

> > Hi Viren,
> >
> > Thanks for explaining. That's interesting.
> >
> > >I have not yet found anything in
> > >Bhaskar that suggests that the culture cannot be a structure.
> >
> > I think this is right, and much that suggests that it is or can be: e.g.
> > the notion of conceptual emergence (not to mention 'structural sin',
> > which btw I have heard said derives from Archer! I'd like the reference
> > if anyone finds it.)  Mervyn
> 
> I agree with the basic point.  However, a question: is there an argument for
> saying that culture is a structure (singular), rather than that it consists
> of structures (plural)?  It seems to me that the latter is more correct, and
> that while culture-structures often develop in relationship and interaction
> with other culture-structures, and that these latter relationships can be
> structural, the structures governing relationships among culture-structures
> are principally social ones (and we should keep social and cultural
> structures distinct).  I'm not suggesting that there aren't cultural
> elements governing relationships among culture-structures, just that they're
> less powerful than the social ones.  But I'm hazarding a guess here, and
> there may be a good counter-argument.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> T.
> 
> ---
> Tobin Nellhaus
> nellhaus-AT-mail.com
> "Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 



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