CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement, February © 1999 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Al!

1999 rights reserved VV



 

Writing for Culture  
 
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i" 
Why a Successful Concept
i$ i
 
Should Not Be Discarded
by Christoph Brumann
In the past d ecade, the idea that speaking of a culture inevitably
suggests an inordinate degree of boundedness, homogeneity , co uelt:nce,
anu stahility h~ gainc ;u wn~iuerablt: ~upportJ anu ~OLUC:: cultural/social
anthropologists have even called for abandoning the concepto It is
argued here, however, that the unwelcome connotation s are not
inherent in the concept but associated with cer tain usages that have
been less standardized than these critica assume. The root of the
confusion is the distribution of leamed routines across individuals:
while these routines are never perfectly shared, they are not randomly
distributed. Therefore, "culi
should be retained as a convenient
term for designating the clusters of comroon concepts, emotions, and
practices that arise when people interact regularly. Furthermore,
outside anthropol ogy and academia the word is gaining popularity and
increasingly understood in a rough ly anthropological way. Retaining
the concept whiie clarifying that culture is not reproduced
unproblemati· cally, ha s its limits in the individual and the universal,
aud is not synonyrnous with ethnicity and identity will preserve th e
common ground the c oncept has created within the discipline.
Moreover, it will simplify comrounicating anthropological ideas to the
general public and thus challenging mistaken assump tiO!l.5.
CHRISTOPH BRUMANN has been a lecturer at the Institute of Eth·
nology of the University of Cologne 150923 Koln, Germany)
since 1992 and is currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork on
preservation-related conflicts and urban identity in Kyoto, Ja pan
(ch..ristoph.bru.mann@1..1ni·koeL'1.de). Raro in 1962, he received his Dr.
phil. in 1997 from the University of Cologne. Among his publications
are 
JAMES CLIFFORD,  %

For a long time, defining cuituralisociai anthropology as the
study of the cultural dimension of humans would have
raised few objections among the discipline's practitioners.
Now the place of culture within that definition is
considerably less certain. Within the past decade Oí 50 there
has develúped' 'tv'hat Sahlins calls the "fash .. ionable idea
that there is nothing usefully calted'a ctil· ture'" (1994:386),
and one prominent voice even advocates "writing against
 i
 (Abu-Lughod 1991}, giving a name to a whole
'"w riting against culture' movement" in Fema.-'1clez's
observation (!994:!6!). AJ.though the scepticism over the
culture concept has its origins in deconstructionist and
poststructuralist thought, anthropologists sympathizing
with it come from an amazing range of theoretical positions
that reaches far beyond that specific vantage point. It will be
worth while to document this disciplinary discourse at some
length before contrasting it with standard anthropological
formulations of culture. It turns out that what is being
addressed by the critics is certain  of the culture
eoneept rather than the concept itself, and I ar gue that it is
possibie-and not very difficult-to disentangle the concept
from such misapplications and to find historical preeedents
for this IDanthropology. In a next step 1 will address what 1
consider to be the root of the confusion, namely, the fact that
the sharing of lcamcd traits among humana is nevcr perfect
and ho ‡‡ this can be dealt with. Finally, 1 will present
pragmatic reasons for retaining "culture" and also
"cultures": the concept has been successful, and other
scientiflc disciplines as well as the general public
increasingly employ it in a way we should not be entirely
unhappy about. Some of these uses are eertainly
problematic, but retaining the concept and the common
Leaders: The Charismatic Founders of Japanese Utopian
Communities," in „
„



edited by lan
ground it has created will bring us into a better position to
Neary (Richmond: Tapan Library, 1996), 
 i

 challenge them.


 i 
 

  
i




fHamburg: Lit, 1998), and "Materialistic Culture: The Uses oi
Money in Tokyo Gitt Ex changes," in  i
i


 i

i
 !"'edited by John Clamr oer aud
Michael Ashkenazi (Lon. don: Kegan Paul International, in press) . The
present paper was submitted 13 1 98 and accepted 3 11 98.
I. I n w r it in g t h is a r t ic le , I h a v e b e n e f it e d f r o m
d is c u s s io n s o f p r e v i o ü ~ v c f s lo n s w i t h H i i l ü l i ü i.
ta n & , T h ü illa S \ V id 1 ü k , and p á r t ic u la r ly
T h o m a s S c h w e iz e r , f r o m t h e r e m a r k s o f
p a r t i c ip a n t s i n a p r e s e n t a t io n t o S c h w e i z e r 's
r e s e a r c h s e m in a r , a n d f r o m t h e v a lu a b l e
c o m m e n t s o f t h e e d it o r a n d t w o a n o n y m o u s
r e f e r e e s . I a m g r a t e f u l f o r a l l t h is a d v ic e ,
a l t h o u g h r e s p o n s ib i l i t y f o r a n y s h o r t c o m in g s
o f m y a r g u m e n t s - w h i c h d id n o t f in d f a v o u r
w i t h a l l t h o s e m e n t i o n e d r e s t s w i t h m e a lo n e .
|


The major concern of the sceptical discourse on culture is
that the concept 8uggests boundedness, homogeneity,
coherence, stability, and structure whereas social reality is
characterized by variability, inconsistencies, conflict,
change, and individual agency:
The ncun  i
appe:lI5 te privilege the scrt of sharing,
agreeing, and bounding that fly in the face of the facts of
unequal knowledge and the differential prestige of
lifestyles, and to discourage attention to the worldviews
and agency of those who are marginalized or dominated.
[Appadurai 1996:12]
 The classic vision of unique cultural patterns ...
emphasizes shared patterns at the expense of pro· cesses
of change and internal inconsistencies,·con. flicts, and
contradictions .... From the classic pero spective, cultural
borderlands appear to be annoying
exceptions rather than central areas for inquiry ............. .
The broad rule of thumb under classic norms ............ .
seems to have been that ïï it's moving it isn't cul· tural.
(Rosaldo 1993[1989J: 27-28, 209]
Culture ... orders phenomena in ways that privi· lege the
coherent, balanced, and "authentic" aspects 
shared lile encounter while enhancing the anthropologist's privüeged
.... Culture is enduring, traditional, structural (rather than
contingent, syncretic, historio cal). Culture iS,a process
of ordering, not of disrup· tion. (Clífford 1988:2.32, 235J
The most·dangerously misleading quality of the no· tion

specificity comes to be and is reproduced. [Friedman
1994:207)
Despite its anti·essentialist intent ... the cultUIe concept
retains some of the tendencies to freeze diíference
possessed by concepts like raee. [AbuLughod 1991:1441
As a result, the differences between the anthropologist
and the people under study are exaggerated, and the latter
are placed in a subordinate position. This increases the
distance between the two parties to the eth· nographic
position as the expert and transiatoror even the very
creator-of such utter strangeness;
"Culture" operates in anthropological discourse to
enforce separations that invariably carry a sense 
 culture i8 that it '1iterally flattens out lile ex· tremely
varied ways in which the produetion of meaning occurs
in the contested field of social exis· tenee. [Friedman
1994-:2071
Applied in this way, culture-a mere "anthropologi· cal
abstraction'i (Boroisky ˜ ëë & 51- is transformed into a
thing, an essence, or even a líving being or some· thing
developing like a living being:
"A culture" had a history, but it was the kind of history
coral reefS-hll.,Ve; the cumulated accfeüou of rninute
deposits, essentially unknowable, and irrele· vant to the
shapes they foim ... our conception of culture almost
irresistibly leads us into reification and essentialism.
!Keesing 1994-:301, 3021
hierarchv ... it could be ... ar~ed that culture is important
to anthropology becaüse the anthropological distinction
between self and other rests on it. Culture is the essential
tool for making other. As a professional discourse that
elaborates on the mean· ing of culture to account for,
explain, and under· stand cultural diiference,
anthropology also he1ps construct, produce, and
maintain it. Anthropologi. cal discourse gives cultural
düference (and the sepa· ratíon between groups of people
it impliesl the air
of the self-evident .... It would be worth thinking about
the implications of the high stakes ilül.il.mpúl. ogy has in
sustaining and perpetuating a belief in the existence of
cultures that are identifiable as discrete, dilferent, and
separate from our own. [AbuLughod 1991:137-38, 143,
1461
Much of the problem with the noun forro ö i
'
has to do with its implication that cultUIe is some kind
of object, thing, or substance, whether physical or
rational observers of the human
metaphysical. !AppadUIai 1996:121
enmeshed in their
Culture ... consists in transforming difference into
essence. Culture ... generates an essentialization of the
world ... [Friedman 1994:206/ 2071
A powerful strueture of feeling continues to see culo ture,
wherever it is found, as a coherent !that lives ano
dies .... It changes and deve10ps iike a living orgmism.
[Clifford 1988:2351
4_
This brings the concept of culture uncomfortably close to
ideas such as race that originally it did a great deal to
transcend;
Viewed as a physical substance, cultUIe begins to smack

any variety of biologisms, including race, which we
have certainly outgrown as seientific cate-
gories·lAppadurai I996:12}
Where düference can be attributed to demarcated
populations we have culture or cultures. Frem here it is
easy enough to convert difference iuto essence, race,
text, paradigm, code, structUIe, without ever needing to
examine the actual process by which
In effect, the concept oí cultUIe operates as a dis-
tancing device, setting up a radical disjunction be-
tween 

condition, and those i 

traditional patterns of belief and practice, whom we
profess to observe and study. [Ingold 1993:2I2}
In global terms the culturalization of the world is about
how a certain group of professionals located at central
positions identify the larger world and order it according
to a centrai scheme of things. ifried· man 1994:208}
The essentialism of OUI discourse is not only inherent in
OUI conceptualizations of "cultUIe," but it re· flects as
wel1 our vested disciplinarv interests in characterizing
exotic othemess. (Keesing 1994:303J
Proceeding from the diagnosis to the cure, a number
of writers suggest that a simple grammatical shift might
help:
A view of the cultural (1 avoid "culture" deliberately
here, to avoid reification as best 1 can) ... [Keesing
1994:309]
1 find myself frequently troubled by the word  i
as
a noun but centrally attached to the adjecti-

val form of the word, that is,  i
". .. If  i
as a
noun seems to carry associations with some sort of
substance in ways that appear to concea1 more than they
reveal,  i
the adjective moves one into a realm $
differences, contrasts, and comparisons that is more
helpful. [Appadurai 1996:12]
Nationalists were themselves using what looked very
like anthropological arguments about culture .
. . One possible escape from this dilemma might be to
abandon talk of different IJcuhures" altogether, because
of its taint of essentialism, but to retain some use of the
adjectival "cultural." tBamard and Spencer 1996a:142)
Following Keesing ... I use the tenn "cultural" rather
than "culture." The adjectival fonn downplays culture
as some innate essence, as some living, material thing.
[Borofsky 1994b:24S)
Refonnulating culture: return to the verbo [Friedman
1994:=w6¡ the "verb" is not given)
Further, despite Moore's belief that "even if one wanted
to, it would be impossible to trash the culture concept
because it is so deeply rooted in the history of ideas and in
the discipline of anthropology" (1994:373), some WIiters
go so far as to envision an anthropology without it, albeit
not in very strong tenns:
of this article could easilv fumish similar references from
equally diverse sources. A profound doubt about the
validity of the culture concept, justmed in tenns of the many
misleading associations it is presumed to carry, has
undoubtedly become an important trope in current
anthropological discourse.
There is no denying that anthropologists in their ethno-
graphic and theoretical wo-,k have eommitted the afore-
mentioned sins in abundance, but I am not convinced that
they have done so   $ i   i
 i" To
demonstrate this, I will tum to anthropological definitions
of culture, since the conception of that term ought to be
most clearly expressed there. Modern texto books define
culture as follows:
A culture is the total socially acquired life-way OI
life.style of a group of people. It consists of the pat-
temed, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and actLng
that are ch~.racteristic of the memhers of a par· ticular
society or segrnent of a society. IHarris 1975: 144)
Culture ... refers ...........to learned, accumulated expe-
rience. A culture ........ refers to those socially trans-

 

  
 a

It may be true that the culture concept has served its
time. [Clifford 1988:274}
We need to be fully conscious of the varying boundaries,
not so much of a culture but of cultural practices. A
recognition 
these ieatures may make us wary of Here and in other textbook definitions, no mention is
simplistic notions of cultural homogene-
ity .... It may indeed make us wary of ... even using the
tenn "cultural" altogether. [Goody 1994:25 S)
In its application, the concept of culture fra~ents the
experiential continuity of being-in-the-world, isolating
people both fram the non-huroan environment (now
conceived as "nature lJ) and from one another .... Would it
not be preferable to move in the opposite direction, to



XX

ticular social group. IKeesing 1981:68J
Culture is the socially transmitted'knowledge and
behavior shared by some group of people. [peoples and
Bailey 1994-:23)
made of boundaries, universal sharing, immunity to change,
or culture's being a thing, an essence, or a living being.
Since the negative tendencies identmed by the cul ture
sceptics are ascribed to a classic perspective." however,
$(
one might expeet them to be more present in oldeI
fonnulations. Here are some well-known exampIes:
Culture, or civilization, ... is that complex whole X
  




X X
  custom,
recover that foundational continuity, and irom that basis
to chalienge the hegemony of an alienating discourse? If
so, then the con· cept of culture, as a key tenn of that
discourse, will háve to go. (Ingold 1993=2/30)
Perhaps we would do best if we stopped privile~~ the
representation of "culture," and instead focused on the
level of events, acts, people, and processes. (Barth
1994:3S8}
Perhaps anthropologists should consider strategies fer
writing agélst culture. [Abu-Lughod 1991:147]
any society consists ol the suro total of
In assembling the above collage I do not want to suggest
that each of the quoted writers supports each of the ideas
expressed. Nonetheless, there is a surprising degree of
common ground among scholars who would not agree on
very many other issues. 2 1 am convinced that most readers
and any other capabilities and habits ac· quired by man
as a member of society. [TyIor 1871: 1¡ Kroeber and
KIuckhohn 1952:811
Culture embraces all the manifestations of social halúts
úf a WI UI lI Ulút y, tht:: rt:a(;uons uf tht: inJívidual as affected
by the habits of the group in which he lives, and the
produets of human activities as determined by these
habits. [Boas 1930:79¡ Kroeber and KIuckhohn
1952.:82)
The cu!ture 
ideas, conditioned emotional responses, and pat-
2 . F o r a m o r e s u s t a in e d a n d s y s t e m a t ic a n a ly s is o f t h e
p r e s u m e d d e f e c t s o f t b e c u lt u r e c o n c e p t / s e e
B r ig h t m a n ( 1 9 9 5 ) .
 ' ' ( '
tems o habitual behavior
hich the members o iable elements' and use a noun ollo ' ed by "o " and an
that society have acquired throu1dl instruction or enumeration o the' elements to de ine it. ' as)in the above
(
imitationand
hich they share
to a greater

or less "integral hole 'o " or "sum total o ." 'lear1y, this
(
degree. [ nton 1936:288¡ roeber and Iuckhohn additive notion o culture is 'only one ay o conceiving
1952:82] ít. (ut (hile the nouns used or this purpose tend to(ard
either the abstract (e.g., "summation," i
) "system,´
c i
means the
hole complex o traditional be· "class,´ "organization") or the concrete (e.g., "mass,´
havior
hich has been developed by the human race "pattern,´ "body,´ "total equipment"), even the latter
and is successive1y Ieamed by each generatíon.
  p ones are almost invariablyemployed in a clearly
 i
 is less precise. It can mean the orms o tra· metaphorical *ay (* hich, it should be added, is hardly

ditional behavior

hich are characteristic

o a given unconventional even *ith a+ * ord such,as "body"-+* ho
society, or o a group o societies, or o a certain race, has ever + touched a "body o evidence" ) + ome o the
  -
oro a certain area,

or o a certaín

period o time. older ormu1ations.are indeed .suspect o conceptual
{ ead I937:!7¡ roeber and Iuckhohn 1952: ë0 ] *
animism, as hen+ roeber + and luclchohn themselves + +
 
xcept or the occasional use o an outmoded
 
ord muse on ho* "the ate o a culture .
depends on.the ate o
 *
(such as "race"or, arguably, the society hich bears /it" ( roeber and Iuckhohn
"civilization")  and or male
+
1952:165-66), or *hen+ ích· ard Thum *
ald de ines
bias, these de initions do not deviate undamentally
0 *
rom the modem ones. Incidentally, most anthropoIogi- culture as+ "the totality o usages + and ad ustments hich
cal textbooks and encyc10pedias 1 consulted quote Ty- relate to ami1y, politícal orma· tíon, + economy, labor,
 * *
10r s ormulatíon, invariably 
ith extensive comments morality, custom, + +
Ia , and ays o thought. These are

( arris r975:144¡

eesing 1981:68,

ottak 1982:6¡ bound to the li e o the social enti· ties in * hich they are
*
 
eopIes and aiIey 1994:21) but o

ten 
ithout giving practiced and perish .
ith these .
... " (Thurn* ald 1950:104 1
 
any altemative de inition I amard and
pencer +
as translated in roeber and Iuckhohn 1952:84). +
part
 *
1996a:r37¡ oodenough 1996:291;
eymour.
mith rom these exceptions,
+ ho · ever, .
the most rei .
ying and
1986:67). This makes me  onder *
 (rightman essentializing de 1nitions in the roeber + and Iuckhohn

1995:527) hether there really is a signi icant gap collection do 1not come 2
rom social/cultural
beteen  hat modem and "c1assic" socia1/cultural anthropologists.4 nd * hen eslie White characterizes

+culture as "an elaborate mecha· nism . o . in the struggle

anthropologists take to be the core meaning  o the ord ï
³culture´; rather, they seem to have di erent theories or existence or survivai (I949: v v
 üroeber and
 üluckhohn 1952.:137), he puts this into a context in
about
 the same
 thing. nd  hat applies to modero 3
de initions o culture applies to the older ones as ell: in hich it is obvious that no more than a metaphor is
the above quotations as  ell as in the other implied.
4
anthropological de

initions in  ..rocbcr and 5 t the same time, ho3 ever,5 one also comes across
  
Iuckhohn s amous collection (19 ), there ís none ormulations such as thc ollo3i .‡‡ g:
 5 5
hich explicitly denies that a culture has cIear We can observe the acts o behaviour 5 o .. o individ·
boundaries, is homogeneous,  does not change, or is a uals, including ... their acts o speech, and the ma·
thing or an organismo 1 ind it signi icant, hoever, that terial products oí past actionso We do not observe a
none o them unambiguously saya so either, leaving  "culture," since that 3 ord denotes, 6
not
55 3ny concrete
these aspects open or investigllticm
  inste<1Q, ne. reaiity, but an abstraction ... { adclí e-(ro3 n
might argue that many o the de initions postulate dia·  1940:21 üroeber and üIuckhohn 1952:2531
crete cultures by attributing  a culture to a specí ic 7
"group,""society," or "area/ but none o them says that ulture is essentialIy
5 a construct that describes the
these units are alays c1ear1y bounded or that  they total body oí belie , behavior, kno3ledge, 5 5 sanctions,
5
must be so to have a culture attributed to them. ost values, and goals that mark the 3ay o li e o any

de initions are also mute on the evenness o distribution peopleo That is, though5a culture 8
may be treated by
 
required or delimiting a culture. The e that mention 5the student as capable o ob ective description, in the
it, hoever, speak ó a ³greater or less degree" o inal analysis it comprises the things that 9 peopIe have,

sharing ( inton above) or even o every individual s the things they do, and 3 hat they think. [ erskovits
being a representative o at least one subculture [ apir 1948:1541 üroeber and üluckhohn 1952: 84i
3 4 5
1949:515-16].
     5
culture is invariably
5
an arti icial unit segregated
The ma ority o the de initions in roeber and 
luck· or purposes5 o expediency .... There is only5 one
hohn s volume see culture as a set consisting o identi- natural unit or the ethnologist-the culture o all
 
3, " very individual is ... in a very : ; <
  real sense,
! a representative o at! 4. These speak o culture as a "stream" ((lumenthaI1937: ; ord

 
"     "   
       
$ X
 

" 
 1949:38;
=
üroeber and üluckhohn 19 :130, 132),
culture o the group o # hich he is a member. requently, i not > = = ;an "embodiment"
:
" ( a iere 1949:68; üroeber and üluckhohn
= 19 :I l, or a "sel ·gen.
typically, he is a representative o more than one subculture, and the erating ... pattero-cleating
degree" to # hich the socialized
" ? arder" ( anunzio 1939:1061 üroeber and
" behavior o any given individual can be
@
" üluckhohn 195:1.:106). ven here, ho ever, ˜ assume metaphorical
identi ied # ith or abstracted rom the "typical or generalized culture % o intentions.
a single group &
varies enormously
&
rom person to person" ( apir
1949:515-16; roeber and luckhohn 1Q5Z:247)
 A B
humanity at a11 periods in a11 places ... ( obert o-
C D D
ie, as quoted in üroeber and üluckhohn 19 2:16 I
It is di EEicult to attribute essentialism, remcation, or F
or-
ganicism to these statements or to similar ones by ur-
5
dock or Gapir. It rather seems that, at least on a general
level, a good number o E typical representatives o E the
"classic perspective" C ere no less aCI are oí these dangers
than are today Hs culture sceptics. ere I agree C ith
C
(rightman that an "expendable Hstra culture H is ... being
retrospectively devised" (1995:528) by the critics as a
selective-and itsel E rather essentialist-construct that
exc1udes those disciplinary traditions tha t are more in
line Cith current theoretical concerns (pp. 527-28).
Where, then, are the unC elcome aspeets associated
C
ith the eulture concept presumed to have originated J
üuper identi Eies (oas as a main culprit, taking him to
task Eor importing and bequeathing toIhis studt J1ts K no·
tion that C as heavily intlueneed by erderHs idea oí the
÷
i*i spirit o E a people presumed to be inherent
in all o E Lits material and mental ereations (üuper
1994:539). ox, hoC ever, emphasizes that (oas himsel E
C
M
as notO consistent
O
and that his EolloC ers C ere divided
ness and homogeneity¡ hoßever, I believe that
responsibility cannot be simply
i
de hlected onto particular
theoretical approaches. ather, a number o h rarely
discussed but poßer hul assumptions implicit in traditions
o h ethnographic ßritin g, traditions that are mueh older
than the discipline o h anthropology, must also be
accused. These assumptions include the existence o h a
mosaic o h territorially bounded, dis crete cultures o h
ßhich the ßorld supposedly consists; the irrelevance o h
intra-and iterindividual variation, the timelessness oh the
cultures under study (ßhich either have no history or
have acquired one only by coming into contact ßith
colonialism), and the superiority o h precontact cultures as
j
an ob ect o h investigation. In much classic ethnographic
usalle. a c1l1tnre ßas slmply llnderstood p synonymons ±th
ßhat ormerly had been called a people,
and the units so designated ßere taken as
the natural, internally undi erentiated,
and unproblematic re erence units or
description ¡ust as they had been-and
continued to be-in most pre- and
nonanthropological ethnography. s a
consequence, many portraits oí
 N
 

P
  NNS 

a
QR P   "Japanese or Tro· briand or oroccan
ing üroeber, (enediet, and ead) holding U T
to a Vhighly culture" are indeed marred by the
integrated notion T hile others (notably
X
o ie and adin) shortcomings deplored by the critics.
spoke o W "smeds and patches" ( ox 1991:102) or coneen- nd ßhen ali· noßski meritoriously
trated their research on diversity andY individuals (1991: reminds his readers o "the natu· ral,
!01-6; see aIso (rit-lltman !995:530-34), verall, it appears to impulsive code o conduct, the evasions,
me that the Wormer perspective gained T eight Tith the the compromises and non·legal· usages"
"synchronic turn" in anthropology, the replacement o W an oí me individual "savage" ITrobriander
earlier diachronic orientation (in evolutionism, (1976[1 9.26,J:! "o), he is someßhat like a statistician ßho
di WWusionism, historical particularism, or ü

gives the average, says that there is variance¡ but does
i



+ ßith a Zocus on the analysis o Z cultural not care to ca1culate the standard deviation. o doubt it
systems at a Zixed point in time (as in the culture-and- ßould be mistaken to search kor 

 l
 
o p
personality school, structural. Zunetionalism, structur· n
m#  l
  1\1alino,±ski oßie, or adin (see
alism and later on, culture-as-text interpretivism). In the also (rightman 1995:540).
l[ tte[ [ pproaches there ßas eertainly a strong incli· q
et still, at least in their more general and theoretical
nation to see more cultural coherence\than actually ex· ßritings, there ßas a clear aßareness o r the construeted
isted. This ]ßas iurther exacerbated in merican anthro- nature o r the culture concept among a good number o r
pology by arsons ^s in Zluential segmentation o Z culture renresentatives o r the "classic tradition¡" and one o r
and society as separate Zields o Z study, a theoretical de· th-em even elevated "alloßance ror variation" to the sta·
cision that discouraged ßhat interest there ßas in the s t
tus o r a "central problem" ( irth 1951:478). ence, i r a
social di ZZerentiation o Z culture and supported amen· disciplinary precedent is neéded, anyone seeki±g to re·
tain a nonrei ried culture concept as an expedlent ab-
_ `
 u
straction (see beloß) can rind it here. e rinitions, as I
have tried to shoß, have been open V˜ this regard any·
@. ccording to urdock (1937:xi, üroeber and üIuckhohn 1952:
251) " culture
a ßay, and there vore I propose to hold apart the historical
a is merely an abstraction rom observed likeliness in the
behavior o individuals organized in groups." @apir (1949: @ 1 @6· usage o v the concept-ßhat it has been taken to mean by
üroeber
a and üluckhohn 1952:247-48) argues that "the true 10cus . : . many in the past-and its optimal usage-ßhat it could
o ... processes ßhich, ßhen abstracted a into a totality, constitute culture mean i v wused "to its best intents," so to speak . @umc::tllne::1i
is not in a theoretical x y
a b b community
a o human beings knoßn as society,
a lil:Íe::nti k JI1l;e::pt l;aIl nu lunge::! be:: lial·
or the term society is itsel a cultural construct ßhich is employed by
individuals ßbo stand in signi/icanta relations to each
a other in order to
help tbem ina the interpretation o certain a aspects
a o their behavior. The z
cc c
true locus o c is.ind t interactions o speci ic dindividuals and, ond the 6. (y
{ contrast, leading {proponents o (ritish social anthropology such
d d e as ortes, adel, and irth continued to vießz society and culture as
sub)ectIve slde, m   ± orld    e !! f    f f     
z ~
""   unconsciously abstract or himsel romf bis complementary "concepts o ßhich the signi icant ele· 
|  }  
| | | ~ | ~  || €
participation in these interactions. . . . It is impossible to think o any   
   $      % $$X  thc±  ‚ 
 ad eq uƒately
f studied in iso latio n ( irth 19@ ±:4 8 3 1. c co r< Ün :g to u r-
cultural
f pattem orf set o cultural patterns ßbich can, in the fliteral sense
o the ßord be re ened to society as such .... The concept o culture, as dock, h o ße ver, (ritish so cial an„tb ro p o lo gIsts „ rath er„
f one-s ld ed 1y n eglected tb e an aly s is o cu ltu re o r th at o
it is handledf by the cultural anthropologists, is necessarily some tbing o
a statistical iction." society‚ , so m u ch so th at h e su ggested rep atriatin g h is
tran s· tlan tic co lleagues m to so cIo l· o gy , ßh ere th ey ßo u ld
talistic conception ((rightman 1995:512-13; üuper constitu te a sp ecialized su b (. eld U 1 9 5 1 :4 7 1 7

1994:@40-41).6
g
specially hor exaggerated assumptions o h bounded -
… …
vaged¡ or example,
†
that o  
 has been proved to be convinced,
†
hoßever, that past† and present misapplications
empirically un ounded, has been abused enormously,
†
and in o the culture concept are o .a comparable degree and
subtle ßays keeps getting in the ßay even o some physical ßarrant similar avoidance.
anthropologists ßho use modero, nonracist methods to
assess human biodiversity (üeita and üittles1997}. I am not


& 
 lematic way that, for example, a cat or a bicycle is. Rather,
or "city." In identifying a culture,
Discussillg the culture concept, one has to distinguish
between  i
 (or "Culture") in a general and
"culture/s" in a specific sense (in the same way as Mead did;
see above). The former meaning refers to the general
potential of human individuals to share certain not
genetically inherited routines of thinking, feeling, and acting
with other individuals with whom they are in social contact
and/or to the products of that potential. It is not very
clear-cut and mentioned on1y in few definitions; besides, it
seems to be derived from the second meaning on which
most of the definitions concentrate. Here a culture is the set
of specific learned routines (and/or their material and
immaterial products) that are characteristic of a delineated
group of people; sometimes these people are tacitly or
explicitly included. The existence of any such culture
presupposes that of other sets of routines shared by other
groups of people, thus constituting different cultures. The
debate in fact focuses almost exclusively on this second
meaning, and 1 will concentrate on it accordingly. It is the
act of identifying 

i cultures that is held to be and we may do so in spite of the disagreement that often
empirically unfounded, theoretically misleading, and
morally objectionable by the concept's critics.7
Of course, cultures are always constructed, but they are
so not oo1y because of being #

ii [Clifford and precisely their boundaries are located in a given case.
Marcus 1986] within the confines of sociohistorically
constituted tropes and discourses hnt Also in  more
profound sense. A culture-as the above quotation from
Lowie reminds us-ÍB not simply there in the unprob-
7. One might object that culture is more than ;ust the sum total 
the term refers to an abstract aggregate: namely: the
prolonged copresence of a set of certain individual items,
and thus is employed not too different1y from other nouns
such as "forest," 
#
we have to abstract such a set of items from observed
instances of thought and behavior, selecting that which
occurs repeatedly rather than that which is singular. This is
a mental operation that is not in principle different from,
say, identifying a style in individual works of art, and the
same capabilities of memorizing previously perceived
instances and ignoring minor differences for the sake of
commonalities are required of anyone who undertakes it.
Since in the empirical world no two things are completely
identical, the result of any such operation is always
contestable, and therefore one can no more prove the
existence of Japanese cultureˆ than prove that of the Gothic
style. Cultures can have no natural´ boundaries but only
those that people (anthropologists as well as others) give
them, and delimiting a certain set of elements as a culture
can therefore be only more or less persuasive, never
ˆ
ultimately true´. Nonetheless, we may consider it
expedient to go on using the concept in the same way that
we go on speaking of art styles, forests, crowds, or cities;
arises over whether these terms really apply to the specific
body of art works, concentration of trees, gathering of
people, or settlement that is so designated or where
The core of the problem of identifying cultures can be
illustrated with the three diagrams in figure 1. In these,
capital letters stand for individuals and numbers for
identifiable ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.8 In the top
diagram, there is perfect sharing among individuals A
through F regarding features ˜ through 6 and among

X'Xf~turee. th~t  occ~ !  %

 


 
 (  of individuals G through L regarding features 7 through 12.
people. This latter, additive view will perhaps appear entirely mistakeñ
to those who see culture as a process rather than as a static distribution
of traits or who~ol1ow Bourdieu (19771197:11) in assuming that the
loose structures of habitus will guide people's e veryday improvisations
but never determine them in a strict sense. Neither of these ideas,
however, can man~e without de termining distributions  features
a
aClOSS people as methodological starting point . Otherwise, there
would be no recognition processes-deBned as that which causes the
presence certain features at one point of time and their absence at
another-in the first place and no way of discovering that some specific
habitus is at ‡work leading to creative variations on a common (i.e.,
temporally ; ud iiiLéfiudividüally sí .ablt:) i.lll:UlI: il1 al,;tual
bt:navior. WheI ever we locate culture and however dynamic we
consider it, there will be no way around determining how given
features are distrib· uted over a given number per50ns at a giv en time
and how this compares with other times and/oI other persons if we ale
to identify a culture, a cultural process, 01 a habitus guiding individuals '
improvisations.
Identifying cultures is not difficult here: Features 1
th...rough 6 represent one culture, features 7 through 12
another. Since there is perfect discreteness between the two
groups of features as well as between the two groups of
individuals carrying them, this partition represents the oo1y
possible way of distinguishing cultures. In contrast, features
in the middle dia~am are rano dom1y distributed across
individuals, and it is impossible to make out cultures in the
same unproblematic way or perhapsin any convincing way.
The problems start with a situation sueh as that of the
bottom diagram. This distribution is far from random, yet no
discrete biocks can be discemed either. One possible
partition would place features ˜ through 6 in one culture and
features 8 through 12 in a second. Each culture, however,
would then contain features that are sometimes associated
with features of the other. More·
8. For the sake of this argument and 3150 $, the criticisms raised, it
does not matter ti any of the latter are excluded or if institutions 01
artifacts are added. Moreover, any observable feature can be inc1uded
in such a matrix, including emic categories , ideal as well as observed
behavior, norms and values, and people' s cultural seU· I'ffl'('~ption 2nd
s~lf-c.ategt)!iz!!tion.
 ž ž
˜
345 6
are no such clusters o habits and that the distribution o
O p
  Š (x xxx xx cognitive, emotive, and behavioralŸ
routines amongžhumáns
‰
x‹xx xxx Œx x x x x ž middle diagram. oßever,
is as in the ž they seem to ear that
x x xxx xx x xxx xx by identi ying ž
eultures ßhen con· ronted ßith a distribution
 like that o the bottom diagram anthropologísts ßill
Ž invariably
ž
be misunderstood  as implying a distribution like
˜ that o the top diagram. easing to speak oí cuíture(,
hoßever, al(
entaiís a cost, namely, being understood as
J xxxxxxx ž
saying that eatures are distributed randomly, as in thež
ü xxxxxxx
middle diagram. 1 doubt very much that this kind o
 xxxxxxx ž
misunderstanding is pre erable, since it¡is not bomeout by
xxx the results o
ž
anthrüpülogical research.
ž
ureover, it iJes in
ž ž
the ace 
 the experience o the billions oí amateur
anthmpologists ßho inhabit ž
the ßorld, ßho in their everyday
lives continue
ž
to identi y commonalities in the thought and
žž
1 2 3 5678 9 10 behavior o di erent individuals and attribute these to their
ž ¢
 x x x   M belonging to the same anlily, ki.. 1 group, gender,
x x ž
 age-group, neighborhood, class, pro ession, organization,
eV 
x x
xxx x ethnic group, reglon, nation, etc.
 eourse, they do so in an
Ë Ê x
x Ë Ë on-and-o, oten semiconscious ßay that-true to its
x Ë Ë Ë x commonsensical nature-cares less about oversimpliications,
?  x x x x x contradictions, and ineompleteness than anthropologísts do
1 x x x x and oten explains dierence incorrectly, or example , in
J Ë x terms o genetic or quasi-genetíc transmission. (ut many o
 x x xx x x these amateur anthropologists ßould be puzzled indeed i ße
 x x x x tried to persuade them that ßhat until recently ße ßouíd
x  have advised them- to cali a cuiture íinstead oí, or example,
xxx "the ßay ße/they do it") does not really exist.
‘ Just as there is no ßay o deciding ßhether a glass is
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 II 1 2 x x x x hal·ull or
£¤hal-empty, there is no ultimate solution to the
x x dilemma being misunderstood as implying either perect
 xxxxx boundedness and homogeneity (ßhen speaking ocultures)
c x
’
xxx or perect randomness o  
distribution (ßhen denying the
“
xxxxxx x x existence o eultures). onronted ßith this dilemma, I
”
xxx x xx propose that ße go on using the concept o culture,
xxxxx x inc1uding the plural orm, because o its practical
› xxx xx advantages. We should do so in a responsible ßay, attentive
 xxxx x x to the speciic audience and also to the problem o
˜ x xxxx communicative economy.9 There are many situations in
 x x x )1. x ßhich "Japanese culture" is a convenient shorthand or
ü x xx x designating something like "that ßhich many or most
 x x x M Japanese irrespective o gender, class, and other dierences
•
I – . l . |
   !   i  i
   

 i
     $ regularly think, eel, and do by virtue o having ¥ been in
$   i
    
   
 

   "   continuous social contact ßith other Japanese.´ nd I am c

c c

conident that at least among contemporary anthropologists
the irst phrase¥ßill very oten be understood as equivalent to
— — the second. ter a11, anthropology did not discover
over, eatÍlre 7 does not readily
˜
group ßith either o the tßo intra-societal variation only yesterday. While many classic
cultures, and individual may be seen as partici· pating in studies o small-scale, out-o-the ßay societies certainly do
both. not shoß any aßareness o it, peasant studies, explorations
o great and little traditions and o center-periphery rela±
™
Incomplete @haring and the Identi ication oí
š
ultures
› œ
)*
œ
O
 


ßill
ever be mueh clearer than that in the bottom dia· gram, and
consequentlyžthere ßillž alßays be more thanžone ßay to cut
out cu1tures rom the uzzy-edged clusters o habits that ße 9. (y the latter 1 mean that, ßith space and time alßays scarce,
ž simplilcation is inevitable, and thereore it is ßise to decide cir-
observe. 1 suspect that most o the culture seeptics do not eumstantial1y rather than¦ in principle hoß much o it is permissi·
really ßant to imply that there ble ßithout distorting one s argument
tions, research on gender, and the ethnographic study o
complex societies and cities have been ßith anthropol ogy
or quite some time noß and have requently occupied
themselves explicitly ßith such §
variation or at least
acknoßledged its existence. ˜ onsequent1y, the danger o
being misunderstood by elloß anthropologists ßhen
speaking o a culture is, I think, much smaller tnan me
critics
¨
claim.
Wutu" ßhich
oreover, ßhen mere is enough time and space, nothing
prohibits us rom representing the arbitrariness and internal
variation o such cultures as aithul1y as possible or
resorting to ormal methods o analysis or delimiti ng
cultures instead o trusting our intuition©or-as is commonly
done ßhen delimiting ethnic cultures- the udgment o the
people ße investigate.
ne could also speciy a minimal
numerical level o consensus required or a culture and then
search or maximal sets o eatures that its this requirement
(standard statistical procedures such as cluster analysis oer
themselves or this task). When describing the tßo cultures in
the bottom diagram, ße may distinguish betßeen core eatures
that are shared universally (eature 3 or the irst, eatures 10
and-arguably- 12 or the second) or close to universally by
the carriers o the culture in question and others that are less
ßidely and unequivocally distributed and may be seen as
less central. othing prevents us rom introducing temporal
variation into the picture: searching or the same eatures in
the same individuals at other points in time may produce
dierent distributions ßhich, hoßever, could again be
expressed in matrices and superimposed on the previous
ones to introduce a third dimension.
ne may also think o
replacing the simple dichotomy o presence/ absence ßith
qualitative values, since people ßill oten act dierently or
ßith variedª
intensity in repeated instances o the same
situation. ll this increases complexity, but the distribution
ßill very likely still be clustered, and ße are still not
necessarily throßn onto intuition as the only method or
inding such c1usters. Thus ße are a180 «
let ßith the
problem cl naming them. It ¬may be­ ob ected that the total
matrix ße are dealing ßith ( oßie s ³only ... natural unit or
the ethnologist´) has o billion roßs -one or each living
individual in the ßorld, not to mention corporate actors that
could also be regarded as culture carriers and dead
individuals -and that it has an a lmost ininite number o
columns, there being hardly any limit to identiiable
eatures.
n top o that, the matrix changes at a tremendous
ter o not even trying, and or this purpose, a ßord
to ®designate the clusters ßill be useul .
et me noß tum to the ßay in ßhich one cu1ture
sceptic arrives at the conc1usion that positing l/a
culturel/ is something ße should °avoid. (orosky,
doing ethnographic ieldßork on ukapuka, a small
°
olynesian ato11, leamed that the islanders ßere all
ßell aequainted ßith a certain "tale 
according to most o them dealt ßith a man ßho
cleverly escapes persecution ±
by a couple o²
anthropophagous ghosts. oßever, individuals
renditions o the tale varied con· siderably, and even
having it told ²repeatedIy
³ ²
by the ¡¡ame person could
pmduce diei ellt ei @i
Il@. T ´nt:tlt: ßould deviate
again rom ßhat the very sameµperson presented
ßhen te11ing the tale in a group. ccordingly, there
ßas no single content element o the plot that ßas
included in every rendition o the tale, and even²
those elements that reachecl a 67% consensus in an)
gender or age-group ßere eß.
nly ocusing on the
67% con· sensus o those individuals considered
experts on the topic o tales by their elloß islanders
ßould inc1ude enough elements to produce a
version that approached the clarity and coherence
ßhich none o the individual renditions ailed to
display
¶
((orosky 1994a:331-34I. ±
learly, there is no
¶
universal sharing here. aving
a number o other ook Islanders-or readers o this
article-render the tale, hoßever, ßould result in
versions that ßould shoß hardly any commonalities
·
either ßith¸one another or ßith the ukapuka ¹
renditioos. ost peopIe ßould very likely re ect the
task, saying that· they did not knoß the story. (ut
among the tales ukapuka individuals told, a general
amily resemblance is diicult to deny. @ome
elements appeared ßith greater requency than
others, and one may see these as more cultural and the
rarer ones as more idiosyncratic or introduce an
arbitrary minimal requency o occurrence above
ßhich a speciie element is to be considered cultural
(and mention that limit
µ ßhenever speaking o such
cultural elements). lternatively, one may search or
those persons shoßing the highest consensus ßith
each other and take their average version as the
"most cultural"11 or -in a kind o analysis that
pace. evertheless, rom all ße knoß and romßhat social
psychologists ®
have ound out about human striving or
conormity ( ang n.d.) ße can be sure that it ßill not shoß a
 ÷

random distribution but ßi11 be highly patterned. In an
analogy ßith ßhat 1 have said about historical and optimal
usages, the act that ße areas yet not particularly ßell
equipped to describe and explain this enormous matrix and
the clusters therein does not mean that ße never ßill be or
that ße are bet-
10. Thus, there is perhaps less need than üeesing has argued11994:
30 ¯\, ,\07-81 to turn to cultural studies as a guide in this regard.
(orosky does not consider-search or elements that
co-occur ßith a certain ²
requency or that even
implicate one another s c

c
11. T h is is c o m m o n 1 y d o n e in c o n se n s u s
a n a l y s i s a n d i s b a s e d o n t h ºe a s s u m p t i o n
t h a t , ß h e n a s k e d  a r t h e ir u d g m e n t o n
c u lt u r a l q u e s t í o n s , e x p e r t s ß i l l a g r e e m o r e
o  t e n t h a n la y p e o p le . T h e la t t e r b a s e t h e ir
a n s ß e r s o n c h a n c e o r im p r o v isa tio n , n o t o n
k n a ß le d g e , a n d a r e t h e r e  o r e le s s l i k e l y t o
c o m e u p ß i t h i d e n»t ic a l a n s ß e r s t o a g i v e n
c u lt u r a l q u e s t í o n . o n se n s u s a ñ a Iy s is is a
s t a t is t ic a l m o d e l  o r d e t e m ú n i n g ß h e t h e r
t h e r e ¼ is a c o m m o n c u lt u r e b e h i n d i n  o r·
m a n t s r e s p o n s e s a n d , i s o , h o ß t o e s t í m a t e
t h e " c u lt u r a I l y c o r · r e c t " a n s ß e r t o a g i v e n
q u e stio n ro m th o se re sp o n se s. T h e a n o
s ß e r s o í e a c h i n  o r m a n t a r e ß¼ e i g h t e d i n
p r o p o rt io n to t h e in  o r m a n t s a v e ra ge
a g r e e m e n t W Í t h t h e o t h e r s , a m e t h o d ß b ic h
p r i v i le g e ;; ½ i e t ll l¾e i ú s , ± im ;e t.h e y te m l tu
a g r e e ß it h a t ¡ c a s I s o m e p e o p le l o t h e r
e x p e r t s l. I t s h o u l d b e n o t e d t h a t  a ir l y s m a l l
s a m p le s s u   ic ¿ e t o p r o d u c e h i g h l y r e l ia b le
e stim a te s { o m n e y, W e l le r¿, and
( a tc h e ld e r 1 9 8 6 :3 2 6 - 2 7 1 . ¿o m n e y ,
( a t c h e l d e r , a n d W e l le r ( r 9 8 7 ) a n d om ney
in a n a n n o ta te d b ib lio g ra p h y o n b is I n te rn e t
h o m e p a g e g i v e o v e r v ie ß s o n t h e n o ß
n u m e r o u s a p p l ic a t i o n s o í t h i s m e t h o d .
presence, making for larger building blocks that can be
subjected tothe above operations instead of the individ· ual
elements. In any case, seque nce seems to be unprob·
lematic, since Borofsky offers without comment an ap-
parently standard succession of all content elements
Ä ëë --&+" Whatever the approach, it is clear that all these
content and sequential elements and aggregates which
occur with significant irequency beiong to a rep ertoire on
culture while making it clear that
which individuals may draw when telling the tale,
constituting the material for their "guided improvisations"
(Bourdieu 1977 [1972]). No Pukapuka individual is
for specific instances of individual thought and behav ior.
But sometimes communicative economy may make it
expedient to speak of "a culture" and identifY the
constituent units of such a cluster as "elements," "features,"
"parts," or "traits" of that culture. In doing so we at the very
least avoid the impression that there is no such thing as the
tale of Wutu on Pukapuka.
In my view, speaking 
universal sharing is not implied does not automatically
privilege coherence. Just as we may concentrate on
explaining why a glass is half-full as well as why it is
unaware of this repertoire, while most outsi d

  half-empty, sharing is as good a theme for anthropological


In contrast to Borofsky, who would not venture be yond
"the cultural" lsee above), 1 do not consider it problema tic
to call this repertoire a part of Pukapuka culture. Moreover,
a description of the tale's elements and their frequencies and
likelinesses of co-occurrence or even-if such can be
found-the identification of larger clusters that constitute
alternative versions of the tale would in my eyes constitute a
faithful ethnographic representation of that specific part of
Pukapuka culture, without confusing anyone about the fact
that individuals will disagree with each other and even with
themselves in their ways of making use of that reper toire.
Representational techniques such as bell curves of certain
features' distributions or identifying center and periphery
within a cultural inventory-or domain, or schema, or
semantic network-may heip us here. This would perhaps
come close to what Keesing seems to have had in mind
when he expressed the hope that "'a culture' as a bounded
unit would give way to more complex conceptions of
interpenetration, superimposition, and pastiche´  (I994:3IO)
and what Appadurai is looking for when he proposes "that we
begin to think of the configuration of cultural forms in
today's world as fundamentally fractal, that is, as possessing
research as nonshar.uig, and 1 wondel' hüw we can avoid
either when attempting to portray andexplain people's ways
of life realistically. And neither does such an approach
preclude temporal variation or presuppose that the always
À
arbitrary, abstract entity th 1t we ~!!ll !! culture becomes !!
thing¡ !!n essence, ar a living being. Moreover, defining
anthropology as the science of culture does not mean that
culture must be the sole focus of analysis: obviously, we do
want to know what "events, acts, people, and processes" lsee
Barth above) do with culture and what they let culture do to
them. Dropping "culture/s," however, willleave us without a
word to name those clusters that, illshaped though they may
be, are nonetheless out there and do play an important role;
and it also makes it difficult to define the discipline in short
and positive words, at least ii we do not coment ourselves
with practicing "the fieldwork science." ,
As pointed out, there is no ulti mate logical reason to
retain "culture/s" (or to abandon it), but there are pragmatic
ones even beyond that of communicative economy. They
have to do with the success of the concept, and it is to them
that I will now turn.
no Euclidean boundaries, structures, or regularities. . . . we m +

+


,
-.
have to combine a fractal meta phor for the sha pe of cultures
(in the plural) with a poiythetic account of their overlaps
and resemblances" (1996:46).
The approach just outlined can easily be extended to
other domains not only of knowledge but also of observed
behavior. Everywhere we find sets of certain leamed
features that are shared more extensi vely by people who
interact witb each other than between these people and
óthers with whom they do not interact or among those
others. And everywhere we will find that people are aware
of this fact, while they are certainly not ignurant uí
imliviuual variatiun even amung those who have much in
common. We should try to describe the unevenness of any
such "differential distribution" (Hannerz 1992) as well as
we can, and it is clear that as yet the precise extent of
The concept of culture has undoubtedly exerted an in·
fluence beyond the borders. of the discipline (Hannerz
6
199 :30):
Suddenlv oeoole seem to agree with us anthrooolo·
gists; cuÍture °is everywhere. Immigrants have 1t ,
business corporations have it, young people have it,
women have ít, even ordinary middle-aged men have it,
a11 in their own versions .... We see advertising where
products are exto11ed for "bed culture" and "ice cream
culture," and something called "the cultural defense
plea" is under debate in jurisprudence.
It is concern for the nation's culture that makes the French
interindividual conformity and 
& 
  X  government establish commissions to search for indigenous
 



 
cient attention, and therefore we equivalents of unwanted loanwords, and it is again in the
do not have a clear theory, for instance, about how much name of culture that the Chinese and Indonesian leaderships
social interaction gives rise to how much culture. We must reject the c1aim to universal appli cation of the Dec1aration
also face the fact that once culture is found to be of Human Rights, dec1aring it a product of Weste rn culture
incompletely shared it will have that much less explanatory unfit for exportation. "Ev-
power
eryday ways of contemporary talk have been heavily blocks that are no less incompatible than the old, ideo-
influenced by our anthropological concept of culture" lo$tical ones. 12 While far fram controversial within his
(Keesing 1994:303). Thus, it is no longer certain that an oWn discipline lsee Axford 1995: 
Huntington's
"evaluative, elitist view of 'culture¶´ (Goody 1994: writings have certainly had a greater influence on the
254-55) prevails, and it cannot be taken for granted that general public than any contemporary anthropological
lay people will invariably associate the word with the study can claim, extending to, for example, the German
original meaning, in which it was reserved for improve- president Roman Herzog, who found Huntington's work
ment and its results (first of gardens, then of individuals, a usefui companion when visiting China (Nass 1996 ).
and finally of societies [see Clifford 1988:337; Kroeber Huntington is an extreme representative of a more
and Kluckhohn 1952.:15,44)). Instead, they will often general figure of thought that is identified as culturalism
understand us fairly well, and this is quite remarkable, or "cultural fundamentalism" (Stolcke Ã
1995). It 
since the word in its anthropological mean 


 

Â

 
 
  2 |
* 
3
   tural



 



 
   
 /
  language heritages in the world, each tied to a specific place of
before the late 192.0S (Kroeber and Kluckhohn origino Since these are taken to be ultimately antago·
1952.:63). lt is precisely this success that makes anthro- nistic and incommensurable, they and the individuals
pology's brainchild difficult to control (Eller 1997:2.53, associated with them are considered best kept separa te,
2.51): ideally in their respective homehnds m, if that fails, in
ethnically defined quarters, as is currently being sug-
As many commentators have noticed, the first thing gested by some urban planners in Germany (

to realize is that anthropology no longer owns the
i 
 November 2.6, 1997). Stolcke finds
concept of culture (if it ever did). Virtually all ele-
ments of society-across the polítical spectrum
... -have learned the language of culture ....
American society has become culture-conscious, to
the point of a "culture cult" in civic society ....
Culture and difference have become the dominant
paradigm of the day, and individuals are being en-
couraged, even driven, to conceive of themselves in
these terms. 
Moreover, this trend is by no means restricted to
postindustrial societies or those aspiring to such a
position. On the contrary, Sahlins (1994:378) states that

  


 
that in European reactionary polítical discourse the
new rhetoric of culture has largely supplanted the
older one of race. Culture is a more egalitarian notion,
since everyone is supposed to have it (although, of
course, in distinct variants). But this is still unlike
racism, in which some people are believed to be
genetically defective while others-usually ego's
group-are not. Cultural fundamentalism, therefore,
will not serve as ideological buttressing for new
colonialisms, but for fueling xenophobic tendencies
in the Euro-American immigration countries it is
already being amply used (Stolcke 1995: 4-8).
| 

 
 
 

the cultural self-consciousness developing among
imperialism's erstwhile victims is one of the more
remarkable phenomena of world history in the late
twentieth century. "Culture"-the word itself, or
some local equivalent-is on everyone's lips .... 0



distinct is not restricted to the political right wing, as
Stolcke emphasizes (1995:6).1t can be detected in recent
papal encyclicals that introduce the concept of "incult·
uration,/I that is, synthesizing elements of two cultures
while maintaining the integrity and identity of eac.h



 
 



 1today, (Angrosino 1994:82.5), on either side of the current
as the New Guinean said to the anthropologist, "If multiculturalism debate over educational contents in the
we didn't have i
 we would be just like white United States IEller 1997:2.52.; Amit-Talai 1995: 140L
men." and among those Greek anthropologists who deny
foreigners membership in their association beca use they
Within the academy, the culture concept is also consider them not reaUy able to understand Greek
gaining popularity. At least in Germany, majar
feuilletons keep announcing the "cultural i
 in the
humanities n. T h e r e a r e w h o le p a s s a g e s in H u n t i n g t o n 's
Á
 *  Bachmann-Melík 19961,-and the replacement of

i $i with  i
#
 $i
 a n t h r o p o lo g ic l l l te xtb o o k s .
centering on a less high-brow notion of culture tSchle-
sier 1996j, has its proponents. Cultural studies has fast
established itself in many countries, and its adherents
have moved into a more anthropological direction of
conceiving culture (Keesing 1994:303), with, for
example, scholars of high literature descending onto the
worldly levels of popular novels, comic strips, soap
operas, and advertisements. And after the demise of the
two-block paradigm in the field of international
relations, the Harvard political scientist Samuel
Hunting· ton predicts a "clash of civilizations" (1993,
1996) in which cultural differences give rise to multiple
new
a r t ic le w h ic h re a d as if c o p ie d from
C o n s id e r the
f o l lo w i n g :
"Villa~es, reltions, ethnic ~oups, nationalities, reliltious JO'OUDS, a11
have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity. The
culture of a village in southem Italy may be different from that of a
village in northem Italy, but both wi11 share in a common Ital · ian
culture that distinguishes them from German villages. European
communities, in turn, will share cultural features that distinguish them
from Arab or Chinese communities .... People have lt:vd~ u1 iuelltity:
a Ie~iuent uí Rome may uefine himselÍ WiID varying degrees of
intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a
Westerner .... People can and do redefine their identities, and, as a
result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change"
[Huntington 1993: 23-24]. Especially the last sentence, however, is all
but forgotten in the further course of Huntington's argument
culture (Kuper 1994:545-46). It ie also never far from
most contemporary nationalist, ethnic, and fundamen-
talist movements. Here, at 1ast, one finds culture being
used in the way denounced by the culture sceptics, with,
for instance, routine references to questionable
megacultures such as "African culture" or "Westem
eulture" (Eller 1997:252, 2531, reduetionist eoneeptions
that restriet cuiture to, for example, ritual iAngrosino
1997:828), or vague ÷
i*
 ideas of a mystieal Secondl.y, there are limits to culture.l4 On the one
substance or ethos that suffuses a given eulture and the
eommunity 
 its carriers (Eiler 1997:252; Angrosino
1997:8271. Whether anthropologists like it or not, it ap-
pears that people-and not only those with power #i
culture, and they often want it in precisely the bounded,
reified, essentialized, and timeless fashion that most of us
now reject. Moreover, just like other eoncepts sueh as
"tribe," culture has become a politieal and judicial
reality, requiring any attempt to authorize more
deconstructed notions to reckon with considerable
institutional inertia Isee the experience of the expert
since many of the ex-
them as far as possible to the interests of speeific indi-
vidual and corporate agents, thus giving "authors " (Fox
1995:277-781 to culture. 1 am ful1y aware that if there is
one thing that Foucault wanted to discredit it was the idea
of individual authorship, but what may be appropriate for
the very large discursive fonnations he inves· tigated
need not be so for all of culture.
hand, culture does not suffocate the idiosyncratic, and
individuals can never be reduced it. To conceive of cul-
ture as a toolkit that ean be put to manifold uses but wiil
never do anything of itsel( however, ís hard1y con·
troversial now for the ntlmerous antbropologists who
have taken up a concero with praxis and the relation
between structure and agency. More neglected is the
other limit of culture, between it and what ís common to
all of humankind. Anthropologieal research on human
universals has not fiourished recently, to the point that
there are no entries or index entries on universals in two
witnesses for the Mashpee Wampanoag claim to cultural
continuity [Clifford 1988:277-346]). In my view,
however, this should not discourage us from de-
constructing such understandings and developing our
own truths (which does not necessarily mean "speaking
for" others in any casel. For this purpose, 1 think th at
three fundamental insights about culture require special
emphasis.
First, the social reproduction 
 culture is always socially transmitted but no longer tied to any specific
problematic and never guaranteed. Maintaining cultural
consensus across time and individuals requires
considerable effort. This point is almost always side·
stepped by cultural fundamentalists, who seem to pre-
suppose stability as the natural condition of culturcs and
speak unproblematically of, for example, the-usually old
but unspecified-"age" of a given eulture. Moreover,
eulture has often simply been adopted as a less
controversial word by people who-consciously or
nnc,nnsdnnslv-still hnld
major new eneyc10pedias (Barnard and Speneer 
Ingold 1994; but see Brown 1991). Crass-cultural studies
leading to the identification of universals have not fared
much better, if their share in major journals is any
evidence. Moreover, research on the expanding level of
"global culture" (wearing T-shirts, mouming Lady
Diana, having heard about global warming, knowing
how to use a thermometer, liking soccer, etc.) that is
location or group iHannen; 1996:38; is only just emerging
(Brumann n.d.). Yet it is precise1y with reference to
1genetically generated as well as ""8Cquired) universals
that we can reject exaggerations of cultural difference
and the notion of incommensurability, pointing a180 to
fic1dwork cA'¡lcncnCcs in which antbrcpologists and
their informants frequently develop common under-
standings and emotional affinity re1atively quickly. And
it is also-possibly only-from here that legitimation far
 Tar.i¡::t ideas  n¡::elldo-l!"e· neti~ universalist projects such as basic human rights can he
tr~~~issi~n and its relatedness to ph~notypev (a point
that is also made by several of the commentators on
Stolcke's aforementioned mide). Almost automati· cally,
recognition of the problem of reproduction will lead to
the role of power in achieving cultural consen· sus. Here
it will be necessary to overcome the remnants of the
"Parsonian divide" and re-sociologize anthropol.
ogy"":"not simply by reciting the Foucault-inspired
"discour8e~power" mantra and by routinely ascribing
discourses, and culture in general, to very large and
vague forees (such as "technoscience," "colonialism/' or

 .
  i i
"the German imaginary" [Linke 1997]13 but rather by
tracing
13. This anicle demonstrates how even the deconstruction of racist
ideas can sometimes border on cultural rondamentalism. Linke
observes an interesting obsession with blood imagery in "the
drawn and their rejection as "merely Westem culture"
denounced. Ido not agree that "anthropology is
fundaroentally about difference" (Eller 1997::151) if this
is intended to be a .programmatic-instead of merely
historical-statement.
Third1y, culture is not always ethnic culture, and nei·
ther is it always tied to identity. Yet anthropological as
weil as lay expositions of culture are frequently prem·
ised on a presumed synonyrny of the three, quite irre-
spective of any commitment to cultural fundamentalism.
For example, the !

íLevinson 1991-95j lists ethnic cultures, and although
thought is being given to in cluding national cultures in
treme utterances of políticians that are quoted (1997=560-61) pro-
voked public outcries showing that "German polítical fantasy" is,
Gerrnan       ?  |     !   4        
%% 5



678
*
X
Ä9 !
i 






!in the
h Ú l l i ú ~ t a i c ú u & l y


and clearly bounded and has history of German racism , 1 think that an analysis of public discourses
been handed down unproblematically from the Nazi period to th e which does nothing to gauge their distribution and influence over time
present seems, however, to be taken for granted throughout her must remain incomplete and suspect of arbitrariness.
analysis. This appears questionable, since the metaphors of "floods" of 14. On this point, Hannerz, borrowing from Redfield, has an in·
immigrants-which, represent ing another kind of líquid, are found to be sightful discussion (1996:~O-4~1.
related to blood 11997: 564-65) -are hardly unique to Gerrnany and
the Human Relations Area Files IEmber 1997:1.2) there ia
still no talk of includin~, say, academic culture , punk
culture, or gay cu1ture in their clearly trans -ethnic man-
ifestations. Not that 1 would envy anyone who wanted t o
undertake such a difficult t ask, but 1 still think that we
should be careful not to overeth nicize anthropology and pay
due attention not on1y to gender cultures but also to age
(Amit-Talai and Wuiff 1995), regionai, professional, and
class cultures, as well as to the global cul tural level
mentioned above. We should also more cloaely analyze the
interplay of ethnic cultures with these other cultures that
often do not stop at ethni c or
Still, there is no denying that many ordinary people have
grasped at least part oí anthropnlngy'$ message : culture is
there, it is learned, it permeates all of every day life, it is
important, and it is far more responsible for differences
among human groups than genes. Therefore, 1 think that
retaining the concept will put us in a better strategic position
to transmit the other things we know than we would achieve
by denying the existence of culture/s. 16 Choosing the fonner
strategy, we can try to establish anthropo logy as the expert
on-if no longer the owner of -culture, whereas opting for the
latter place s us in the difficult position of denying



  

 something abúut which we rightly claim to be more

  
 

 
2sider it a wise move to f ollow knowledgeable than others .
Appadurai in restricting the concept of culture (or "the Staying with culture/ s, we could object to Hunting ton
cultural," as he preiers) "to those differences that either that he is justified in paying attention to the ro1e of eulture
express, or set the groundwork for, the mobiliza~ion of but that the drive to power and wealth that 



 
group identities" (1996:13) OI to agree with J{nauft that
"culture 18 now best seen .. . as a shifti ng and contested
process of constructing collective identity" (1996:441 . To
do so would prevent us from showi ng that not all culture is
relevant to identity formation and that what collective
 internal
cultural identity exists nee d not be ethnic. 1 believe that
anthro· pology's critical potential with regard to ethnic and
nao tionalist moveme nts and to cultura l fundamentalisms in
general would be seriously hampered as a c onse· quence.
After all, it could be a healthy reminder that what people 
 conceals so much cultural diversity that their analytical
a given nation really have in common i s oÍten trivial things
sllch as familiarity with certain soap brands, commercial
slogans, or TV stars and not an ever·present awareness 
 picture any clearer in the future . We could point out that
their common history and heritage. Anthropologists should
remain capable of showing people that what they see as
"their culture" is 

2 glob~l     
: 
  
 and more often
clothes itself in cultural differences than is caused by them. We
could add that there are in deed anti-Westem or anti-Islamic
feelings in the world but that currentIy none of the pannational
"civilizations" he identifies can count on a degree 
solidarity that is in any way comparable to what fre quently
develops in smaller culturally defined groups such as
nations or ethnic groups. We c ould alert him to the f act that
almost any of the eight major "civiliza tions" he identifies
value must be doubted and tha t global communication,
migration, and cultural diffu sion will certainly not make the
polítical salience seems to be more imp ortant than cultural
diversity when caLegúdes aS Ilarruw as "Japanese



 
  civilization " and as broad as "African civilization" are
These insights, of cour se, cannot be allowed to ob scure considered to be of the same order. We could refer him to
that the reified notion of c ulture has become a so cial fact anthropological studies that try to identify wider cultural
that itself deservedly receives an thropological attention. areas wi th less intuitive methods IBurton et al. 19961 and
Nor will they rescue us from the dilemma that the demand aro 
  ' X   


 XXX  

for unprohlematic:ll1y reproduc.e-d¡ overlarge, and

he proposes. We could sensitize him to the
ethnicized cul tures often comes from precisely those people
we sympathize with a nd that this kind of culture is oft en
deployed or commoditized more effectively than what we
have to offer as an alterna ti ve . Moreover,
any-anthropological or amateur-identification and
deseription of one's own or another eulture is potentíally
reaetive, that is, eapable of influencing that specific culture
and the;people carrying it when it hecomes publ ícly
aeeessible. Consequendy, ethnographic i nnocence is a vain
hope in an age i n which mass media prolifera tion can very
quickiy turn any statement about cultural affairs into a
polítical asset -or target Isee, e .g., the publíc debate about
Hanson 1990 as documentedinH anson 1991, Linnekin
1991, andLevine 1991, or the controversy about
Karakasidou 199¡lS).
15. This is an ethnography about Greek Macedonia which in 1995 was
rejected for publication by Cambridge University Press not because of
qualitative deficiencies but for fear of retaliation from Greek
nationalist sources (see the Internet documentation of events, opinions,
 




degree to which his separating a "Confucian civilization"
from a "Japanese eivilization" disregards imponant East
Asian cultural commonalities (inc1uding precisely the influ·
enee of neo -Confucianism) and thereby falls prey to a myth
of Japanese uniqueness that Japanese and foreign ers alike
have done much to mai ntain (Dale 1986, Miller 1983,
Yoshino 199.21,17
16. One anonv mous review er con~;derecl t.he ícll'~ 
 
'ecl'.1c·ate' the genera l publié ... a strangely sanctimonious view of
anthropology's role in the world." ˜ agree that a scientiftc discipline as
such is not obligated to anything, but those of its practitioners who are
paid for teaching or for research, often out of public funds, should feel
some responsibility for disseminating tmth. 1 also sympathize with
pleas "to integrate the discipline more centrally within acade' mia, ano
in pubiic poiicy debates" ¡wemer 1995:14j. As 1 see it, ati this leads to
one or another forro of educating the genera! publico 17.1 restrict
myself to the objections we can raise as experts of culture. There are
other, equally serious flaws in Huntington's model which, however,
need no anthropologist to denounce them, such as the claim that anned
conllicts arise more often at the fault lines 
;Å


and protests under http://www.h-net.msu-edu/ Isae!threads!CUP!.  
  
 
 
irJl~biumts 2 
 Moreover, we could tell practitioners of cultural stud-
ies and other disciplines that thev are indeed ri~t to
extend their study of culture to the more mundarle and
everyday, but we could go on to argue that an internal
analysis of the products of popular culture alone (as, for
example, in most contributions to Schwichtenberg 1993)
remains ungrounded if it is not complemented by
ethnographic freid research on recipients; engagement
with these products and the resulting practices, dis-
courses} and fantasies, referring them to, for example,
anthropological research on television {Kottak 1990, A.
continues to be so, especialIy in the hands of cultural
fundamentalists. But, weighing the successes and fail·
ures, 1 arn not convinced that the concept really entails
the criticized connotations, and 1 think that it can be
dissociated from them and used l1to its best intents.J/
Staying with culture-while emphasizing its problem atic
reproduction, the limitations imposed on it by the
individual and the universal, and its distinctness Írom
ethnicity and identity-will enable us to retain the
common ground it has created within anthropology and
profit from the fact that the general public increasingly
P. Lyons 1993, H. D. Lyons 1993, Mankekar   Pace understands what we mean when we employ it. Denying
1993, \Ililk I993} as a sourcc of inspiration. thc cxistcncc of cultu!C'and culturcs .vil1 be difficult to
Of course, if a sufficient number of anthropologists transmit to the many that see them out ~ere, and they will
agrees that the use of the term l1 cu lture" undermines such very likely turn to others who may then dis serninate their
a strategy and contradicts all our scientific results, its questionable expertise without serious competitors. Any
meaning will eventually converge with this assess rnent scientific concept is a simplifying construct and has its
and the terrn will have to he dronned IBriehtman costs; but once the advantages have been found to
1995:54I). But 1 arn not convinced that'this' is ii levita- outweigh these costs it should be employed with a clear
ble, and 1 regard the resulting speechlessness as too high
conscience.
a price to pay. We might consider a move similar to that
of the pop star Prince, who lately gained much attention
by renaming himself l1The Artist Formerly Known as
Prince," or l1TAFKAP" for short. 18 If only for the more
difficult pronunciation, however, 1 doubt very much that
l1TCFKAC" would become a comparable success.
Therefore, 1 propose that we retain l1 cu lture" the noun in LILA ABU-LUGHOD
its singular and plural form and clarify for those non- 
ii
/i
!
0#1
2


i!
 
antnrup
.1

pn~- Ul1 UgISt

'.
S wnu
1
ar~ WlJ .lm g t U llSt~n wnat
'1 1 '. " . 1 .. '
tn~
1
‡ ‡ T , . , . , . ,. T , . , ,. . .  T
    ,
  / ' 7' " ., ., ., l '

 I V . " 1 0 0 0 3- 0 7 9 0, U . ' ) . ./i . ®


        
nomenon so designated really is-which, as 1 have tried to
emphasize, requires very clear and definite formulations
about all the things it is i 
There is no immanent justification to be drawn from the
empirical world either for using or for discarding the
culture concepto Anv set of persons who have specific
routines of th{nking,' feelin& and acting in common will
invariably be different with regard to other such rou-
tines, and therefore wherever we find sharing there is
also nonsharing. If we agree, howeve r, to l1imagine the
world in which people dwelI as a continuous and un-
bounded landscape, endiessly varied in its Íeatures and
con~ours, yet without seams or breaks" (Ingold 1993:
226), we will still need a vocabulary for describing its
mountains, plains, rivers, oceans, and islands. The an-
thropological concept of culture offers itself for that
task, all ~~e more so since it has persuaded many people
outside anthropology of its usefulness. There is no de-
nying that it has often been applied wrongly and that it
Ruancla certainly did notÆneed cultural dífferences oí a "civiliza tiona.l"
orde·! to ~la1Jght~! e.ach ther, ~ncl the E1.HOpe~.n8 fo! centu .. ríes did
Ç follo~ing Edward Said's critique ~f Orientalism, of the
not need them either- lr the specter oí an "Islamic-Confu· cian"
al1iance forming against "Westem civilization," which, to my mind, is
simply unfounded.
rS. An interim as "symbol"-graphically expressed by a symbol and
never written out-attests to this artist's versatility in the field oí applied
semiotics.
 2 VII 98
Brumann has done us a service in laying out, side by
side, many of the attempts by contemporary anthropol-
nm ~ ~c ! t
‡‡..‡ o--- ...‡ ~...‡‡..‡..‡ "1.-_..........., .......A......
' n f 1 1 1 P C l t ';n n t h p ~ l 1 lt " T P r n n r p n f " J . . I p o l C ! n ' l " p n - ' l; n r l c .
_ .a. ‡‡ . - ..._ ±±" ±±" ""±"±± " "±"" * *
 " " 3 """""""" - _ ..... _ ........... ‡....... _ .
us of the complexity and richness of the anthropological
tradition with regard to this central concepto There is a
tendency these days to close out the history of the disci·
pline-to forget that those who carne before us reflected
careful1v on a range of theoretical problems and repre·
a
sented variety approaches. - -
His intelligent arguments in defense of the cuIture
concept} however, miss the mark. 1 think he needs to ask
why it is that so niany of us might want to question the
concepto What is at stake? As he is careful to note, the
anthropoiogists in his coüages come out oí dif ferent
theoretical traditions and make their arguments for
different reasons. 1 wi1l1et others speak for them· selves.
My own argument for writing against cuiture was
developed in the context of trying to think how 1 might
v:rite an ethnography cf a Bedouin cO~~tL~ity (in which
1 had worked for many years) that did justice to the
complexity, uncertainty, and contestations of everyday
life and to the individuality of its members. 1 was hoping
to achieve in my text some fidelity to my exnerience of
beinl! there. 1 was also workinl! with a st;ong sense,
ways in which representations of people in other parts of
the world} particularly parts of the world that are viewed
with antipathy in the West, might reinforce-or
undermine-such antipathies. 1
 concluded that the idea o "a culture," ßith its inevita ble ture and ße do not question the notion o culture, ± .

i
generalizations and typiications. had become a cen tral ße are not in a position to mount this critique . c..
component o the distancing and othering against ßhich There are other arguments to be
1 ßanted to ßork, even ßhile 1 recognized that humans made ahout the ßay in ßhich the
are, in the broadest sense, "cultural" beings. culture concept is unhelpul. These
1 noß eel even more strongly that the concept is can best be made by taking up a
problematic, mostly because I do not agree ßith (ru- small, perhaps throßaßay point that
mann that "usages;; can be separated rom iithe concept (rumann makesä
in deense oí
È¡tsel." I canoot accept the idealism that distinguishes
É
"cuiture.;; e points to the
7iJiíst
ricaI usages" rom "optimal usages." erhaps contributions that anthropological
this ls a dísagreement about language. 1 avor pragmatics studies o television might make to
over semantics. 1 do not think that concepts have tran- cultural studies. 1 agree ab solutely

Ê Ê*
 Ë Ë
Ì 
 ÍÎ 2 
ations that ße must complement the study
and socially embedded. They are employed only by real o the products o popular culture
people in real situations. To guote the deinirions, many ßith "ethnographic ield re 
 å  æ
very subtle, oered by anthropologists o the past is to be 


æX
æ

æ ±;"ith  å


too literal.@uch delnitions tell us noth !!tüall9ut the
  and the resulting practices,
Ï
contexts in ß
 they arose or. more im 0rtant, the discourses, and antasies," but as
contexts in ßhich the concept is put into play and ßith someone ßho has been engaged in
ßllat impacto exactly such ield research or almost
(rumann says that there are pragmatic reasons or eight years noß 1 ail to see hoß this
staying ßith the concept; I thinkÐthat there are prag· ßill vindicate "culture." Quite the
rnatic reasons or questioning it. e gives us tßo rea· opposite.
sons or reclaiming the concept: cornmunicative econ· ç In a recent
è article dedicated to
omy or expediency lit is a shorthand or the notion Ñ o liord eertz
é (surely the most
shared routines ßhich surely ße all recognize exist and inluential merican theorist o
the preservation oí our authority as experts to intervene culture, inex·
ê plicably absent rom
ßhen nonanthropologistsÑ such as cultural undamen - (rumann s discussion)ç entitled "The
talists la ßonderui- term! misuse the concepto In some Interpretation o ulture{s ˜ pter
ßays, 1 grant him the mst. We a11 knoß in some sort o Television," 1 relect on hoß and
rough ßay that dierent groups o people share certainÒ ßhy anthropologists should study
things, ßays o thinking and doing. Who
Ó Ò Ô could deny it
television on ëthe hasis o some
nd ßhat other name is there or trus espite the vir 
 thoughts
ì on gyptian televi sion
 Õ$Ö*$X ××-
××  
  × Ø tion, serials píace í
in the
ë
lives o some
though, 1 doubt that anyone today ßould be ßill ing to villagers in pper gypt. 1 concIude
undertake the ormidable task he proposes o draßing up one section (I997:12I! as olloßs:
matrices oí shared and nonshared eatures. The larger
problem is that reining and redelning cannot solve the Taking television seriously orces
problems created hy the ilct th;tt the culture concept us to think about "culture" not so
canies historical accretions and takes its meaning rom much as a system o meaning or
the many contexts in ßhich it is and has been invoked. even a ßay oí lile but as something
The concept is alßays contaminated by the politicized ßhose eiemems are produced,
ßorld in ßhich it is used, the same ßor ld in ßhich censored, paid or, and broadcast
anthropology ßas bom and lourished. That "billions o across a nation, even across
amateur anthropologists" ßould ind us strange te deny national boundaries. The
ßhat they "knoß" is precisely the hegemonic or ideological-and thus
problem: >
poßer-related-nature o
This, 1 believe, is the crux o our disagreement. (ru- mass-mediated cultural texts in the
mano admits that the concept o "race" had to be 


îî 
Ù aban-
uoned as scientiically invalid and so Úsub ect to 
 
<
undeniable.
devastating political uses as toÛ he dangerous. ulture, he This, in tum, should lead us to
cIaims, is dierent. (ut is it The act that it is such a think about the ßays that aspects
"successul" and popular concept should be cause or o ßhat ße used to think o as
suspicion, not sel-congratulation. That the concept local culture, such as moral values

Ü
 
 
 
  ÝÝ 
Ü  
2Ü   Þ   Ü about the proper age o marriage
ï
thropological or the propriety o ßomen s
ß à ones as the pernicious theses o @amuel
untingtonà s clash o civilizations is, or me, serious. education, are themselves not
ß
untington s gloriication o Westem superiority and neutral eatures
gross simpliication and reiication o cultures and cul - to be interpreted but the sometimes contested re·
tural dierence resonate ßith popular sentiment ilnd c
 
ù

ð !  ñ
racist politics. It seems to me that our role is not to use á sult o other, more local, pro ects o poßer that are
" * 
our expertise in "culture" io correct hhn (by shoßing ) c  ß



 
â
"1
that his cultural umts are too big or too incornmensu- º 4 1 go on to note that ethnographies o
l....1e...±7 television lhecause its culturai texts
rate, too homogenized or too crudel but to criticize the are produced elseßhere
. and inserted
very notion o settinã u ou s o eo le deined
into local households, communities,
s are c tures as ost e an opposed. I and nations) "conum or us the need
civilizations are extensions o to rethink the notion o culture in the
cultures and cultures depend on cul- singular, as a shared set o meanings
°istinct rom those hel° by other
communities
ò ò ó
sometimes calle°
cultures " (p. I}. 1 °o not °eny the
t:xistence oí reac tive processes o
cultural assertion, the same ones that
(rumann, olloßing @ahlins, notes. 1
see these as politicize° processes oí
i°entity ormation in global contexts
ßhere culture has alrea°y been ma°e
(through colonialô ism ano
neocolo:roJ.alisml °el_ 1itional. (ut ˜
also polot
1.
out that these reactive uses of "culture" are
balanced by many other processes in the world
todav that unsetde the boundaries of cultures. The
encounters that television stimulates among
lifeworlds, sensibilities, and ideas make especialIy
problematic the notion that cultures are localized
communities of people "suspended in shared webs
oí meaning"-or, to use Brumann's terminology,
with shared routines. 1 conclude a long section on
the different fonns of cosmopolitanism that four
Egyptian village women embody by calling for
analysis oí the cultural hybridizations and forms of
cosmopolitanism we find in places like Egyptian
most dissenting voices-at least in North America,
and especiaIly among younger scholars-have been
silenced. As another consequence, there has been
an enonnous growth of what Barrett has memorably called
"no-name anthropology" (1996:179): ethnographic writing
which avoids - i:heoretical issues altogether but continues
to be built upon the application of traditional
anthropological research methods.
Indeed, the issue of method-which Brumann does not
address-is a crucial argument in support of this articie's
thesis. The way sociocuiturai antbropoiogists have be en
conducting research, at least since the beginning of the 20th
century, is fundamentally based upon the assumption that
villages.    &




= there is a particular fonn of human organization-called
  õ




  trace them to particular "culture"-that can be described and a,.alyzed thiOUg.."1.
configurations of power, education, and wealth in participant observation, collection of documentary
particular places (p. 1271. Looking at the best of other materials, and interviewing. And postmodem
research on television by antbropologists, such as that anthropologists have not been able to sug· gest-let alone
by Ginsburg (1993), Mankekar(T993(1, 5
~nd Rofel implement-one single, minuscule, peripheral research
(T991), T find si!lljl~r ~ttention to social fields of method that differs in any substantive ˜
fram those
power and national ideologies, not "culture" or deveIoped f!raund fOt1ndf!tion~l disciplinary assumptions
"cultures." (see Bemard 1998). Therefore¡ not only does the emperor
In short, although 1 am impressed by Brumann's have no clothes, but if he did they would be the very same
attempt to distinguish the different usages oí the old c10thes he has been wearing all along. This point needs
culture concept and his insistence that the slippage emphasizing, because it preempts Brumann's concession
between "culture" las an abstraction signifying that "if a suf ficient number of anthropologists agrees that
shared features) and the notion of bounded the use of the tenn 'culture' ... contradicts a11 our scientific
localized "cultures" is not intellectua11y necessary,
1 give greater weight tO the social and politicallife
of the concept as it has developed historically. 1
thus question its continuing usefulness. It is,
perhaps, as Brumann suggests, a case oí the cup
half-fuIl or half-empty.
results  the term will have to be dropped." Even the
antbropologists who most criticize the culture concept do
research by applying methods based on the assumption oí
human "culturality."
Furthennore, as Brumann point.s ø
out, this assumption has

implied the reification pr cess critics have imputed
to it. The reification of culture, however, has become
intrinsic to the folk use of the concept and fuels 
E. L. C ER R O NI-LONG  
 (\;C¡ri~~t X  |     < 
V
 
u 
Vh
a
aa

fying the wanton abandonment of our discipline's core



!
i


2


i!
 concept, the times demand that anthropologists actively
1
i


 "

ë
2""/"8 IX 98 engage in counteracting the dangers of "cultural
fundamentalism" through the judicious dissemination of
What a breath of fresh air this piece is! And how disciplinary insights.
encouraging to see an artic1e so c1early out of line But, alas, intellectuals operate within specific cultural
with post modem orthodoxy published in a major contexts, and postmodem anthropology has been gready
anthropological joumal! Admittedly, the influenced by the í"ncreasingly popular "consumer view" of
concluding section reveals that the author shares culture; according to which cultural practices are "invented"
the postmodem belief in the myth of "global and cultural identity is "negotiable." In the postmodem
culture," as well as the confusion between culture world people often believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that
and ethnicity, on the one hand, and culture and there is no such a thing as a society-there are only
subculture, on the other. But the artic1e does such. individuals. Consequently, personal identity becomes a
a good job at revealing the "emperor-has-no- major preoccupation, and consumption is the only tool for
clothes" aspect oí íashionable critiques of the defining it. In this context, culture becomes the ultimate
anthropological culture concept and highlights so commodiry ¡Cerroni-Long 1995:5-6¡ 1996).
well the danger of abandoning this concept just Brumann's paper usefully reminds us that antbropology's
when it is increasingly being misused at the original aim was ithe analysis of identity politícs¡ rather,
popular levei that it must be heartily welcomed in it was the holistic study of our species for 
 
 /
spite of its drawbacks. 

  >

;

  
  ch~rtlcteristics. In
The points the article argues are not new¡ in fact, particular, sociocultural anthropology set out to document
eloquent clarifications of these issues have been and analyze the features of group behavior of a very
made before (e.g., Goldschmidt 19851. What is particular kind-the one involving the definition of enduring
valuable
÷
is the 



 
 
 aggregates of people, recognized as such by their members.

ö  
 L~an 

 decades oí postmodem within which all functions
indoctrination have induced extreme theoretical
fatigue in many anthropologists. As a consequence,