itself could

and this is not because children do not make sounds: in tact, children make l‹its ot sounds;
—1988, The Gender of ltte ‘noise’ ’ children are muted, n‹it by way of’ silencing,
€1i ft, Manchester U.P.
Toren, C?. 1953. but by the absence of a li stening will. It might be flat-
Thinking
Symbols: A Critique of
N9Cf bflf ( l 92h ). NH (n.S.)
18, pp,26(1-26S.
— l99tL Mak ing .km.sr ‹›{
London: LSE M‹inographs
no.6 I .
— 1993. Making hist‹iry:
the si gnificance ‹1t
childho‹id
antliropol‹igy ot’ rriind. /lJun
(n.s.), 28, pp.4f› 1 -47S.
Whiting, B. & C.
Edwards. 1958. £:iiil‹ir u ‹›J
Brh‹i vi ir. Harv‹ird U. P.
invitesounds
but these the reader
or to, as it were, say her/his
piece during the break. I believe that such a text would
be what Kit Davis, with Umberto Eco, has called an
‘open work’ (Davis 1993): in the ‘open work’, the audi-
ence becomes the performance. With every new reader,
tering to think at m yself as working towards a repre- or new reading, the account is re-written.
mentation of smaller voices, but all 1 can in fact do is I cannot claim to have understood individual child-
provide an account of how I sought to listen. ren’s particular experiences, nor to have t‘elt the imme-
I have argued that whilst, in discussing fieldwork diacy with which they lived their daily lives as ‘small
practice, it is important to acknowledge the field- people’. I can only write an account of and from my
worker’s political and historical conditioning, it is own perspective. And I believe that it is through the
equally important, in the production of ethnography, to involvement of an audience that such an account
seek to escape the dictates which autobiographical auth-
would, if at all, be meaningful; in the same way as it
ority might impose. I ha›'e, moreover, suggested that was only through the children"s presence that I began
the dialogue between past and present, the distinction reinventing own concepts of self, and it was through
between autobiography as tool and autobiography as this re-membering of a smaller, less authoritative, me
perspective, and the tension between participation and that I could begin tt› approach a group of people who l
hope will one day read, re-open, and challenge my ac-
to speak, interrupts itself. And a text which interrupts count. O

The politicization of ‘culture’

SUSAN WRIGHT

The truthor i.›' ci .»ewior

le‹’turer i’ii ‹ ultural In the early years of modern social anthropology, warrant explanation and too deep to be delved into by
anthropologists announced their most important find- non-anthropologists. How are decisit›n-makers (whether
of BirmiaChum. N/ie iJ o ings and theoretical advances to Section H of the Brit- they be anthropol‹igists ter claiming legitimacy from an-
ish Association for the Advancement of Science. As thropology) politicizing ‘culture’ and deploying the
w li‹› ha.s re.sear‹’hed 997 president of thi s Section, I chose to address con- concept in a range of fields of power‘? How can anthro-
politi‹’ul c ultw e and temporary developments in one of our oldest concepts, poltigists use their new theoretical approaches to ‘cul-
l ^'*""""" '*1 8""" rrt°"'“* ‘culture’, as a way of continuing that tradition.' ture’ to explore and reveal the effects of the current
th‹ U K. J Why be so bold as to engage with a word which Wil - uses of this concept in contemporary pol ities?
liams (1976: 87) declared was one of the two or three I will start by discussing what I am calling ’old’ and
most complicated in the English language and which in ‘new’ anthropological approaches to ‘culture". I will
British, North American and European anthropology then use these appro‹iches to examine h‹aw, and with
has had complex, contested and very ditferent histories? what effects, decision-makers have introtluced and de-
By mid-century, Kroeber and Kluckhohn had f’ound ployed ‘culture’ in three different ‘fields’ the last t’ifteen
164 definitions in their famous review ot what anthrt›- years. First I will examine British right wing politi-
pologists meant by culture (1952: 149). By the 1970s, cians’ use of ‘culture’ to talk about nationalism in such
when cultural anthropology was well established as one a way that they can distance themselves from the taints
of the four fields of anthropology in the USA, in British of biological racism, yet reintroduce exclusive practices
anthropology ‘culture’ had nearly disappeared from in an insidious cultural guise. Second, I will review
view. In the last ten years, with the help of cultural how writers and consultants in organizational manage-
studies, ‘culture’ has resumcd centre stage in British an- ment use ideas of ‘culture’, which they attribute to
thropology. The aim txt this paper is not to tally up how anthropology, to propose new forms of organization.
many definitions of ‘culture’ anthropologists have They claim ‘de-layering’ and ‘flattening hierarchies’
generated by the end of the century. Rathcr, the paper and the formation of ‘flexible teams’ of continually
pursues Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s observation that ‘the self-reskilling ‘portfolio’ workers will permit grass-
occurrence of these ldefinitions] in time is interesting — roots creativity and workers’ sell’ management and em-
as indeed the distribution ot’ all cultural phenomena in powerment. I will explore the unacknowledged costs of
either space or time always reveals significance’ (i6.). such 'empowerment’ and how under the rubric of ‘em-
The aim is to treat the prominence for ‘distribution’ in powering corporate culture’, there lurks an older idea of
Kroeber and Kluckh‹ihn’s terms) ot ‘culture’ in the organizational culture as a tool of top down manage-
1990s as itself a cultural phenomenon. What is the sig- ment control. The third field is overseas development
nif’icance of culture’s recent reappearance as a central where ‘culture’ is just entering the discourse (Wright
concept in British anthropology'? The issue is not con- 1997). Largely this is as a result of a UNESCO report
fined to internal disciplinary debate. In the last decade, Our Creative Diver.City. This report was meant to do for
politicians and decision-makers have introduced ‘cut - ‘culture’ what the Bruntland Report did for the environ-
ture’ into the discourse of many ditferent “fields’ ment and development, but the report has so far gone
(Bourdieu 1991) o1 contemporary society. Decision- largely unnoticed. Anthropologists played a major role
makers and media commentators often claim legitimacy in formulating the ideas ot culture which this report
for their discourses by referring to ‘culture, in an an- proposes should be the basis for world ethics and de-
thropological sense’ a phrase which closes off further velopment policy. Anthropologists of development have
exploration by claiming that there is one (their) long sought such influence. Some would see the aims
meaning of culture which is at once too sett-evident to of anthropology as understanding the local. national

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 14 No 1. February 1998 7

Copyright ©2000. All Rights Reserved.
and international processes by which impoverished
people are marginalized and disempowered, in order to
influence those processes, or promote the perspectives
of’ those who are silenced, or enable them to speak and
act more effectively for themselves. When anthropo1‹ag-
ists had an opportunity ti› act as policy makers and
steer the culture bandwagon themsel ves, did they de-
ploy a concept of ‘culture’ which would make any of‘
these aims more achievable'" In all three lie Ids, politi-
cians, official s and academic adx’isers are using ‘cul-
ture’ as a political tool. Whether the concepts are being
deployed by anthropologists di rectly invt›1ved in in-
fluencing and writing policy (as in the thi rd instance) or
whether ideas are being attributed to anthroptilcapy for
legitimation. in all instances, anthropology is implicated
i n the politici zation ot ‘culture’ How can we use ‹›ur
understandings of political processes to reveal the ways
decision-makers are using ‘culture’ in a growing num-
ber of ‘f’ields’, and analyse its effects on those who are
marginalized and impoverished?
fold meanings of culture
In the early 20th century, ideas of ‘culture’ advanced
by anthroptaltigists tuok on a radical tone. Tylor’s
( 187 I ) ntition of culture as a whole way of life ot’ a
gr‹aup or society marked a point of departure for mod-
ern social anthropologists:
‘Culture’ is that complex whole which includes knowl-
edge, beliet’, art, morals, law, custom, and uny other
capa- bilities and habits ac uired hy man | sic ] as a
member of
society (Ty lor 1871 : 1 ).
If this was a point of departure, it was not a basis for
ctinsensus: anthropologists set e›tt’ along divergent
paths. Tylor’ s own approach was to combine Herder’s
romantic idea, that nations. groups within nations and
peoples at different periods have distinctive cultures,
with the enlightenment idea that each of these cultures
was at a different stage in the evolution of ci vilization
or in a progression towards European rationality. Boas
rejected Tylor’ s social evolutionism. He stressed the
particularity of each culture as a result of the group’s
responses to environmental conditions and their specitic
historical development. By treating ‘culture’ as the prti-
duct of historical and social forces, not biology, he
criticixed racial determinism (Stocking 1974: 22 I ). In
Britain, Malinowski and his students advanced a differ-
ent critique of the rationalistic Victorian conception of
‘man’ by arguing that far from being ‘savage’ and il-
logical, each of the ‘peoples’ in Africa, South Asia and
the Pacific had a distinct, rational and legitimate way of’
life which should be valued: ’emphasizing the authen-
ticity and coherence of distinct cultures was a way of
resisting the civilising mission fundamental to the Euro-
pean colonial prr›ject’ (Merry 1997). Anthropol‹igists
differed profoundly in their theories and in the aspects
ot western thought that they questioned, but they shared
an idea of the world as made up ct! ‘peoples’, each with
a coherent way of life, or ‘culture’.
By the 1970s, l’ar from being radical, this idea of’ 'n
people’ having ‘a culture’, was seen to have been a cru-
cial element of colonialism. To critics, this idea of ‘cul-
ture’ created fixed entities in which the West could in-
tervene. By measuring, categorizing, describing, repre-
senting and thereby supposedly ‘knowing’ others, the
objects of that knowledge were made the subjects of
new forms of power and control (Asad 1973, Said
1975). This once progressive idea was also taken up in
regressive ways by extreme nationalists who used it not
simply to champion claims l‘or independence and sover-
eignty but at so to pursue the politics of xenopht›bia, ex-
clusion and ethnic cleansing.
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 14 No I , February 1998
Copyright ©2000. All Rights Reserved.
In a great ilood ol criticism, the ct mponents of this
idea of culture were unpacked. Briti sh functional i sts.
for example, were criticized for hay ing treated a ‘cul -
ture’ as a small scale, bounded entity organized thr‹augh
economic, social and political institutions which inier-
acted as a self‘ contained “whole’ sustained in a stat ie
equilibrium. This had clearly becn a fiction when ink st
t›fi the places studied, however remote, wcrc being
visited not just by anthropologists, but by merchants,
missionaries and colonial administrators. Societies were
neither unchanging nor bounded, but part of a world
order dominated first by colonialism and later by nation
states, international capitalism and inlernatit›nal agen-
cies. These had been left tout ‹at a picture ‹›f ‘cultures’
as ahistorical, sell-contained entities (Gough 1965).
Anthropologists of various persuasi runs were at so
criticized for treating ‘culture’ as il it were a set ot
ideas or meanings which were shared by a whole popu-
lation of homt›geneou s indi viduals — which
empirically was not the case.' Asad ( 1979) criticized
British anthro- pologists for seek ing the unique
‘authentic culture’ ot another society in the form of an
integrated system ot consensual ‘essential meanings’
which sell-reproduced regardless of economic and
political change. lf anthro- pologists constructed the
social order out of’ ‘essential meanings’ which did not
change in new historical and economic conditions, how
would social transt’ormation occur? Instead, he argued.
‘essential meanings’ were discourses which some people
in the society had man-
aged to make authoritative by continually pre-empting
the space of‘ radically opposed discourses. The problem
Asad thought anthropologists should address is how an
authoritati›'e discourse is produced in particular histori-
cal circumstances. I n a paper which I take as a point of
departure for the development of what I am calling
‘new’ approaches to culture," Asad argued that anthro-
pologists had mistakenl y endorsed, as “authentic cul-
ture’, historically specific dominant ideologies or auth-
oritative discourses which were neither timeless nor
uniformly shared.
Although anthropologi sts have developed new ways
of thinking about ‘culture’, these ‘old i deas of culture’
have percolated out from academic discourse and, as
will be shown below', are still in w idespread use in pub-
I ie parlance. The main features of thi s, still-current ‘old
idea of culture’ are:
— bounded, small scale entity
— def incd characteristics (checklist)
— unchang ing, in balanced equilibrium or self-reproducing
— underlying system of shared meanings: ‘authentic cul-
ture’
— identical, homogeneous individuals.
New meanings of culture
The changing political and economic conditions to
which Asad referred were the end of European coloni-
alism and the continued expansion into new areas elf
relations ot production and exchange based on capital.
Most recently, they would include the international or-
ganization ot production and consumption, the spread
of global communication networks. and the interna-
tional integration of t‘inancial systems. These changes
have provoked labour movements within countries and
from the south to the north of the globe, as exemplified
by a woman I met in my South Tottenham park re-
cently. She is an Asian who grew up with an English
education in Trinidad and has worked in England for
1 5 years in nursing and administration. She is learning
Hindi at night classes so that she can converse with
relatives she visits in I ndia. Her and her family’s ex-
perience of colonial labour migration, post colonial
economic diaspora and ‘r‹aots’ tourism speaks ot‘ what
Hall called ‘di slocatecJ histories and hybridised eth-
nicities’ ( 1993: 356). As anthropoloqi sts have argued
for many years (Ct›hen 1974, Macdonald 1993), and
more recently Hall and other exponents (Morley and
Chen 199fi) oi cultural studies in Britain have made
clear, cultural identities are not inherent. bounded ‹ir
static: they are dynamic, fluid and constructed situation-
ally, in particul ‹ir places and times. This is not just a
Western urhan phenomenon of’ the 199t)s. In a tribe in
Iran where 1 did t‘ieldwork in the 197()s, the population
was made up of layers of refugees. Multi ple identities
were constantl y negotiated; 1 inks with people in tribes
from which they had fled were maintained t›r rein-
vented: there was no bounded, c‹insensual, authentic,
ahistorical culture. Theoretical developments in cultural
stucties, and in post-structural and femini st anthropo
It gy, have led us to understand that ‘cultures’ ure not,
nor ever were, naturally bounded entities.
The I ractttring of social anthrt›polt›gy’s cenlral con-
ceit has sent us back to look again at coloniali.em. On-
nei’ ( l9 b4) questioneJ the ‹original image ot‘ colonial
power and ‘the juggernaut of capitalism’ i inpacting on.
and inserting them eel ves into, an indigenous ‘ local cul-
ture’. She and others have been critical of the way both
colonialism and ‘local culture’ appear as unitary entities
in thi s image (A sad 1 993: 5). What better choice ot a
site to challenge this image than the kind of location in
which the old concept of’ ‘culture’ was rounded: a
remote island mid way across the Pacific Ocean'' Merry
( 1997) studied 1 Sth und 19th century Hawaii, and
You nd a di zzying array of people from Norw’ay It› China
were present in what she calls not a ‘local community’
but a ‘ct›ntact zone’. In an unbounded site, this medley
of people drew on the practices of their various places
of’ origin, in the light of their current interests, tt› work
out how to organize labour. trade and social relatit›ns.
Ci›ntests took place between people in asymmetrical re-
lations of power. over their multiple and contradicltary
cultui al logics. Each actor endeavoured tu mantaeu v red,
in unpredictable peel itical and ect›nomic situations. to
define or seize ctintrol of symbr›Js and practice.s. Sym-
bols and ideas ncvcr acquired a closed ‹ir entirely
coherent set of’ meanings: they were pol y valent, fluid
and hybridized. Key terns shitted in meaning at dit t’er-
ent historical times. When a cc›alitit›n of act‹irs gained
asccndanc y at a particular historical moment, they in-
stitutionalized their meaning tit key terms in law'.
Merry’s is a good example of’ the new idea ot cul ture
as a contested process c›l meaning-making. The contest
is over the meaning of key terms and c‹ancepts. How
are these concepts used and c‹antested by dii”terently po-
sitioned actors who draw on local, national and glohal
I inks in unequal relations of power? How i s the contest
framed by impl ieit practices and rules — or do actors
challenge, stretch or reintcrpret them as tlFt of the ctan-
test too‘? In a flow of’ events, when has the pt›wer to
define? How do they prevent other ways tif thinking
about these concepts from being heard‘? How do they
manage to make ther r meanings stick, and use institu-
tions to make their meanings authoritative" With what
material outcomes?
Sue Reinhold ( 1 991) poses these tJtiestions in order
t‹i reveal in detail the process of ideralogical struggle in
I 9S0s Britain. The contest was over the power to define
lhe state’s attitude to homosexuality in Britain and
make authoritative that det’inition through legi elation. In
the context ot an atmosphere of homophobia and phy -si
cal ‘queer-bashing’ attacks in London, a group in Har-
ingey campaigned t‹ir ‘positive images’ to counter the
ANTHROPOLOGY TODA Y Vol 14 No 1 , February l99b
Copyright ©2000. All Rights Reserved.
negative stereotypes of gay people available to children
in their schools. Their lt›cal tapponents exercised their
I inks tu Conservative Members of Parliament, wht› ap-
prtipriated and inverted the meaning of the key terms of
the debate. The word ‘promoting’ was first used by the
campaign to ‘promote positive images’ of homosex-
uality: MPs accused them of ‘promoting homosex-
ual ity’. I n successi ve parliamentary debates ‘promt›te’
was made tt mean seduction of ’normal' children,
which was equated w'ith an attack on ‘the fami ly‘, the
basis of order in the state, and thus with ‘subversitan’.
The group of MPs succeeded in inserting a new clause
into current legislatitin on lt›cal government outlawing
actions or use of restiurces which wr›uld ‘promote" the
acceptability t›f homosexuality as a ‘pretended family
relationship’. This new meaning of ‘prtimoting’ and its
associated cluster of terms, m‹ide authoritative through
state legislation, had material ettects: negative stereo-
types were endorsed. and local authorities became timid
ubout spending on services or issues for g‹iy people
which might pussibl y be interpreted us coming under
the legi elation in a test case. Reinhold ( 1993: 471-21
points to similarities between the contest over positi ve
images and other campaigns against minorities during
the Thatcher government. Right wing Conservati ves
used the authority of parliament to project negative
meanings of key terms and symbols concerning ethnic
minorities. miners and other categories which they mar-
ginal ized. excluded from their dominant notion of ’Brit-
ishness’ and demonized as a danger to order and sub-
versive to the state.
Three stages in these contested processes of meaning
rnak i rig can be identified in the above examples. The
first is ‹overt ‹attempts by identified agents to redetine
key symbols which give a particular view' of the world,
ot how people should be and behave and what should
be seen as the ‘reality" ct their society and hi story: in
short. an ideology. A second st‹ige is when such a view
txt the world becomes institutional ized and work s
through non-agentive power. Foucaul t has ducumenled
ht›w kntaw’ledgc about tJiental health, sex uality and
criminality in the 1 8th and 1 9th centuries became the
basis of new pr‹ictices on which institutions were built.
These institutit›nal pi-actices shaped perceptions, ca-
tegories, vulues and behaviour.
A third stage is when a key term which carries a new
way ct thinking ahout one aspect of lil’e enters uther
domains (t›utside the activities tif the state) and
becomes ii dittused and prevalent way of thinking in
everyday 1 ife. For example, Emily Martin ( 1994) tound
that ‘tlex ible" first became a key term when people re-
acted to the A IDS/Hl V virus by rethinking the immune
system and the defence resp‹anses ot the body. Surpris-
ingly. ‘flexible’ and images of the immune system
quickly entered the domain of employ ment to describe
the attributes of post-Fordi st. self-managed, sell -im-
prov’ing ‹ind team-lemming workers and companies.
Within a short time. extreme versions of these l4cxible
attributes, which had been symptoms of a mental ill-
ness, were reinterpreted positively as employment skills
(Martin 1997). “Flex ible’ moved quickly across thi‘ee
dittércnt areas of U.S. life — immunology, employ ment
and mental health — und become a prevalent image ‹if a
new kind ot self.
At its most secure, an ideology appears hegemonic.
That is, it becomes so natural i zed, taken for gr‹inted and
‘true’ that alternatives are beyond the limits of‘ the
thinkable. As Comarofl ‹Ind Comarotf ( 1 992) suggest.
in its hegemonic dimension, culture appears coherent,
systematic and consensual. I t tries to 1t›ok li ke an ob-

1. I thank the R‹i)-a1
Anthropological Institute tor
sp‹insoring my President’s
Day program me of speakers
on Ihe ’Poliiicixation of
‘ Culture” ’ and the
initiative, led by the
V ice -President, Gelphinc
H‹3ulton, to try and i
improve the coverage ‹it
anthrt›pcIogy in the mclia. I
mm ytate tu I to Jane ñuwan.
Nancy Lindisfarne and Cris
Sht›re for \’cry constructive
comirients tin an curlier dratt
‹›f tlii s paper.
suminari /e all the debates of
the I 971)s in American,
Brifi;handFrench
anthr‹9pology about where
'culture' resided — in a
structure ot uctual social
re1 ations (Radcliffe- Brown),
in an underly jnp set of
val ues. ideas and principles
v'hich intormed all domains
of social. economic and
political ‹›rg nization
superorganic pattern of
f‹irces abstracted from
‹ibser ved events and
behaviour f Kroeber). in a
plane of sy stems of
cultural
yinh‹›I (Schneider), in the
pri›uc res oI” the human
mend thai pru‹Iu«c I nrmal 1\’
(Lév•i -Strauss), in the minds
‹›t i‹\dividuaIs, us an
e‹hn‹›graphic aI¿ori‹hn4 r›f
v’h:‹I thCy need to kn‹›w t‹›
‹operate zs members of a
s‹›ciety (G‹›uden‹› igh) or as
interwnrked systems ut
w'liich public sy mbolic
action can be interpreted
(Cieeriz). There ,«c
e.g. Keeping 1974.
3. In contrast to the usual
delineati‹in of a shift in
anthropology t"ruin structure
to meaning, by t‹›vu.sing en
AsaJ”'• ai ticlc I and giviny
'e,sencu% meanings’ to
were similar ly ret'ornaed
e.g. 'indii•idu‹il', ‘freedom’.
‘chtiice’, ‘citizenship ,
‘consumer’ and prex'ious
‘puhlic’ and ‘collective’
were JiminisheJ (Shnre and
Wrlyht 1907: 2\J;.
3 Claude Lé›’i Strauss
was an hi›rrorary member
of the V''orld Commission
un Culmre and LJevcopment.
He ttnd Marshal Sahlins
lt)
ject, a thing beyond human agency, not ideological at
all: in short, like the old idea ot authentic culture. As
mentioned above. anthropologists themselves had pre-
viously mistaken hegemonic ideologies for authentic
culture and in the process, endorsed those in the com-
munity with the ascendant power to define the charac-
teristics of their ‘culture’ and prt›ject it as timeless and
objective.
No ideology, however hegemonic and entrenched in
institutit›ns and in everyday I ife, is bey‹and contest;
‘culture’ is a dynamic concept, always negotiable and
in process of endorsement, contestation and transforma-
tion. Differently positioncd actors, with unpredictable
in Ventiveness, draw on. re-work and stretch in new di-
rections the accumulated meanings of ‘culture’ — in-
cluding old and new academic ones. In a process txt
claiming power and authority, all are trying to assert
dif t’erent detinitions which will have different material
outcomes. I n sum the characteristics of new ideas of
culture are:
— ‘culture is an active process tel meaning inaki rig and
contestation over definition, including of i tsel fi’ (Street
1993: 2)
— people, di fferentl y positioned in social re Nations and
processes of domination, u se economic and institutional
resources available to them to try and make their defini -
tion of a situation ‘stick’, to prevent others’ definitions
trom being heard, and to garner the material outcome
— sites are not bounded — people draw tin local, national.
global links
— the way c lu sters of concepts form is historically spe- cific,
and ideas never form a closed or coherent whole in its
hegemonic form, culture appears coherent, syste- matic,
consensual, like an object, bey‹ind human agency, not
ideolog ical — like the old idea ofi culture.
Cultural racism
In British politics, this new view of ‘culture’ has itself
been appropriated and redefined by the New Right. Led
by Margaret Thatcher, the New Right represented an
alliance between liberal economic and conservative pol-
itical theories (King 1987). In economic affairs the state
should promote private enterprise and encourage — even
invent — markets. In p‹a1itical at!tzirs the authority of the
‘age-old’ institutit›ns of the central state should be up-
held, suppr›ried by ‘traditional’ values in educatit›n and
family life. In a study ‹›f the Suli.shurs’ Re i'ie w', a prin-
cipal journal of the New Right, Seidel (1985: 107) ar-
gues that the New Right appropriated one of the f‹iund-
ing inspirations of cultural studies, Gramsci's ideas t›f
hegemony. That is, (as set out above), idetalogy
becomes hegemonic not only through the institutions of
the state but by being diffused through all areas of
everyday life. To unsettle and replace the dominant ide-
ology since the Second World War, the New Right
realized that they had not just to be active in politics,
but to make interventions in ‘culture’. They consciously
engaged in the manipulation of words. especially the
process ot renaming and redefining key concepts. In
particular the New Right focused on appropriating arid
reformulating the meanings of one semantic cluster
4
‘difference’, “nation’, ‘race’, ‘culture
New Right authors seem to agree with the idea that
the world can no longer be seen as a mosaic of discrete
cultures, and that migration and diaspora have gener-
ated populations with multifaceted dift‘erences. They
appropriated the anti-racist language about the need to
respect cultural dit’ference. This did not mean that they
rejoiced in cross-cutting diff‹irences and fluid identities,
or celebrated the creativity inspired by such hybridity,
as Hall enjoined ( 1993). Instead, they inverted this
meaning of ‘difference’. They opposed the dilution of
separateness which Hall relished, and turncd diflcrence
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 14 No 1 , February 1995
Arizpe. was designated hy U NESCO’s
[Director-€ieneral for Culture t‹i ,upers'i sc the work of
Copyright ©2000. All Rights Reserved.
into an essentialist concept to reassert boundaries: the
distinctiveness of Englishness must be defended.
As Gilroy 1 1987: 60) pointed out. the New' Right
defined ‘ Englishness", as the hegemonic core of British-
ness. through culture. They agreed w'ith the anthr‹api›-
log ic:il idea that nations and cultures are historically
constituted. not bioltagicall y rr onto logically gi ven.
Htiwever, they used this idea not to ert›de but to rcin-
torce exclusiveness. National identity was del’ined as a
feeling ot loyalty to persians ‹if true’s own kind (Seidel
1957: 50 quoting Casey). One’s own kind, or ‘we’ u'as
defined as those for w'hom a list of ‘English’ activities
had pleasant associations or aroused enthusiasm. A
quote l'rom T.S. Eliot is used trequently:
[Culture | incl udes all the characteristic activities and inter-
ests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the
twcl fth of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin lablc,
the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut
into sections, beetr‹aot in ›'inegar, n inetccnth-century Ct›-
thic churches and the music of Elgar I Elioi ] 94b:3 I quoted
in W illianis 19.5 S: 230 and Casey 1982).
The problem with such a list is next just, as Williams
observes 11958: 229-30), that El iot is purporting to
adopt from anthropology the noti‹4n of cultut‘e as ‘a
whole way of life’ yet is only concerned with ‘sport.
food, and a little art’ characteristic of ’English
leisure’. More to the point, these customs and practices
are presented as expressions of homogeneous nation-
ality (Gilroy 1987: 69) whereas, as Seidel points out,
this list is decidedly white and Christian and frequently
gender and class specific. Tebbit, the former Conserva-
tive party chairman. turned pleasure at the sound of
leather on willow into a test of national allegiance when
he asked, which side would Afro-Caribbeans applaud
when the West Indies was touring Britain? The Tebbit
Test threatened tta make sentiments of attachment into
instruments of policy. Hall discerned a danger that the
answer to a question of identity would be used as a
basis t‘or ct nferring or withholding rights of citizenship.
He was scathing at the idea of allegiance to the va- garies
of Engl ish batting fiorm being the price for draw- ing
family allowance:
It should not be necessary to look, w’alk, feel, think, speak
exactl y like u puid-up member ct" the buttoned-up, stitt- upper-
lipped, I ull y corsetted ‘tree-born Engli shman ’ t'«ffu- rally to
be accorded either the int’ormal courtesy und re- spect of
civilized social intercour.se or the rights of entitle- ment and citi
zenship (Hall 1993: ? J8).
To the New Right, England stands or falls on the
hegemony ot a particular culture. Margaret Thatcher fa-
mously expressed a sense oi threat of being ‘swamped’
by alien cultures that would dilute this exclusive ver-
sion of Englishness. However, never could members of
ethnic minorities be so attached to sentiments and
›-alues of Englishness that the New Right would accord
them the right to participate in their definition and de-
velopment. When some British A sians acted in terms ot‘
one of the professed core values ot Englishness — toler-
ance and respect for different points of view — by prop-
osing changes to the blasphemy laws during the Rush-
die Atfair, they soon found that their rights did not ex-
tend to shaping those c‹ire values. John Patten, the Min-
ister of State at the Home Of’fice, published an open
letter through the press tra British Muslims ‘On Being
British’. In a tone Asad finds reminiscent of‘ colonial
administrators addressing alien populations under their
protection, Patten set out the essential components of
Englishness at the core of British identity which he said
they should learn. Apurt from faith and tamily which he
considers they already share, these ‹me fluent English,
understanding of the democratic processes. laws and
system of government in Britain and the history that
lies behind them — knciwledge which few white Bi it-
,ccreiari at tier the
I3i recior-€,encral itir
the Coinmissi on, anal some
tu prep‹ire papers to
influence panicular chiiplers,
Auth as Deniz Kandiyoti ’s
paper on gender rind
development.
6. I itiank Thomas H)
Hand Eriksen t‹ir ihis point
and
Uiicd Nainns is a hndy
o( nttion-rates, it›
emphasize
btirders w’otild have been
inadmissible. The
include a very experienced
ethnic ptilitician, Olc-Henrik
N'lapga. Presi dent ‹it the
Sarni Parliarricnt iti N‹irway.
As»d. Tul,l (cd) I 9?3.
An/ñr‹›yrVr›q v un/ //r
1.‹›ndon: lihaea P.
— 1979. Anthrtiptiltigy
and the analysis of
ideology.
Main 14: 607-27.
and British identity in the
make cf lhe R uxhdie A f fair”
Bal tim‹›rc: Jchn Hopkins
York: Chundle
Pubhxhing
Bourdieu, Pierre. I90 I.
Lnnyuuye ‹incl fiTmfi‹›//‹
P‹›\i’‹°r. Cambridge: Pnlity P.
Calas. M. 9. and
Smircich, I-. 1902. ‘L ring
the ‘F’ 'ord: feminist
thct›ries and the sociul
c‹›nseguci ces ‹›f
organizational research“ in
Mills, A. J. and Tancred, P.
Lnndon: Saye.
Ca.scy. J. 1082. One
natit›n: the p‹›litic of
(Autumn): 29-8.
C‹›hen. Abner led.) 1974.
Monograph 12, London:
Tax'istoek.
C‹imaroft, John and Jean.
1992. Elhnc›yraph\ nowt the
Boulder: Westview P.
Deal, T. and Kenned)', A.
Harmondsw’orth: Penguin.
D‹iuglas, Mary 1987. f/riu
let.trim/ion.i i’hink. I.ondon:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Eliot, T. S. 1945. Nc›te s
To vvarrfx the Dr finil ion ‹›{
C"ultu re. L‹indon: Faber
Etiksen, Thomas Hy hand.
I'J07. ‘Uur Creati ye
Hi varsity' paper io
conf°erence on Culture and
R ight.s’ Sussex U niversity,
I fi - 1 6 I ul j.
GfJA1 1996 t’uIlural
ishers could confidently claim to possess I Asad 1993:
242). Others add to such crore values of Englishness a
canon of literature and rcspect for authority.
This ret’ormulation of nation in terns s of culture
rather than race was part ot the New R ight’s attempt in
the I 9S0s and 1990s to redefine racism out tit exist-
ence. Like Enoch Powel I before them, the New Right
professed a revulsion for racism. They ridiculed the
idea that the mosaic ot human groups t’ormed a fi xed
hierarchy based on grades of bi‹alogical inferiority. By
redefining race as a tñelins of loyalty to people ‘of
one’s own kind’, they claimed race to be a moral and
noble idea. To defend one’s “culture' from attack from
people not ‘of one’s town kind“ was legitimate self
defence. In a neat inversion or denial of power relations
(a torm of blaming the victim), writers in the Salt.Thurs’
Re view accused people who sought equality for ethnic
minorities of provoking racism by attacking whites.
State institutions and ‘traditional’ values, for example
in education, were at the core t›f the ‘culture’ which
u'as to be defended. Those multiculturali sts and anti-
racists who sought to change the workings of state in-
stitutions or laws in the interests ‹if treating all citizens
more equally, did not recognize the distinction that
Tebbit reiterated at the 1997 Conser vative party con-
ference, between nationality detined hy culture and by
political i‘ights: between “the English’ and ‘foreigners
holding British passports’ (Indef›endent A October
1997). Multiculturali sm, Tebbit claimed, was divisi ve
(ib.). To writers in the Suli.shurs Review, anti -racists
were also subversive. attacking our institutions and
values and threatening the order of ‘our’ nation. As Sei -
del points out, the use of ‘w'e' and ‘our’ as a defiiner of
nation drives a clear white wedge between black and
anti-racist people, and the rest of the community ( 1955:
115). Writers in the S‹ilishur j Re view adamantly denied
racism. yet their f’raming of nationalism in terms of ’our
culture’ cued a choice of policy recommendations for
ethnic minorities — complete assimilation, retrospective
guest worker status, or removal by repatriation — which
were in implication and effect ract st.
In summary, the New Right appropriated the new
ideas of ‘culture’ from cultural studies, anti -racism and
to a lesser extent social anthrop‹i1ogy, and engaged in a
process of contesting and shifting the meanings of ‘cul-
ture’, ‘nation’, ’race’ and ’difference’. They mobilized
‘culture’ to reinforce exclusion, using it as a euphem-
ism for renewed racism. with profioutid implications for
public policy and people’s lives (Kahn 1995: 6).
Corporate culture
In the early 19S0s, ‘culture’ became a buzx w‹ird in
management studies. Deal and Kennedy (1982) dis-
covered ‘corporate culture’ and Peters and Waterman
(1986) claimed that excellent companies were those
that had a ‘strong’ culture. Soon a corporate culture,
often equated with a mission statement, had become the
.sine quo rim of any serious organizatit›n. This 1
iterature attributed the culture concept to
anthropology: Geertz ( 1973). Turner ( 1974), Bateson
( 1972) and Douglas ( 1987) were the most frequently
quoted. Both re- searchers in organizational studies and
practising man- agers looked to anthropological ideas of
‘culture’ for a metaphor for new forms of organizing in
the ‘post modern’ political economy. There has always
been a close relationship between academic research on
organ- izations and the thinking of practising managers,
such that organization researchers have played a central
role in ‘making’ organi nations (Calas and Smircich
1992: 223). This interchange between academics and
practi-
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY V‹ 1 14 No 1. February 1995
Studies w'ill he the death cl
Copyright ©2000. All Rights Reserved.
tioners has increased in the 1990s as managers have
called on researchers and consultants to provide ‘train-
ing’ to change organizations. It is not unusual for an-
thropologists researching organizations to find rnan-
agers asking them t”or references tc publicaticJn
which would extend their repertciire ‹›t metaphors to
manage by (Martin 1994) and statf referring tti
anthropOl‹igical ideas acquired lhrt9Ugh training
course.s.
Companies are using both cold and new ideas c›f ‘cul-
ture’ as tool s of management. Some managements em-
phasize that the company is a clearly demarcated entity,
with a boundary against its envirt›nment, containing
speci fied grc›ups of people, organized hierarchically,
each with a checklist of the behaviours which c‹anstitute
company culture. For example, Me Donalds marks out
its space and identity with the golden arches logo and
standardized decor and l‘taod containers. The core be-
liefs of’ the company culture — Quality, Serv ice, Ct›n-
venience and Value — are drummed into managers at
Hamburger University to bond the tar-flung franchisees
together (Deal and Kennedy 1952: 193). Counter staff
have to follow a checklist of standardi zed behaviours in
performing each task — right down to when to make eye
contact and at what points to smile at a customer during
a transaction. I n this example. the old idea of ‘culture’
as a bounded entity with a fi xed identity and checklist
of characteristics is depltiyed in a centralized system of
command and control.
I n other industries, managers are using new ideas of
‘culture’ as an image for new forms of organizing. This
is especially in industries where products are designed,
manufactured, distributed and marketed all in different
countries. To stay competitive, products are ct›ntinually
redex eloped, and the sites of production, the em-
ployees, and relations between them are forever chang-
ing. Harvey describes companies ‘whose material
presence might be no more than a box ot ctantracts, the
enumeration ot’ those people who belong, temporarily
and ior the duration of a particular service, to the net-
work which generates wealth and pow'er for another
equally disparate and dispersed group of in vestors’
( 1996: I›). Where is ‘the cirgani zation’? No longer
does an architectural monument symbolize the company
or contain the w‹irkforce. Work is organized through
teams or all iances, operating across boundaries and
rapidly reforming in new circumstances. Such ctam-
panies look for staff wh‹› are prepared continually to ‘re-
skill’ thenasel ves, engage in ‘personal reinvention’ tt›
cope with risks ‹ind new situations, and acquire a
’portfolio’ of experiences and contacts to help them
‘hop’ f‘rom job ti› jt›b (euphemisms lor workers on
short-term contracts with no job security or career
structure, who have periodically to retrain at their own
expense and are handling high stress levels). In order to
harness workers’ knowledge, managers want staf‘f to
feel empowered to participate in mixed teams of man-
agers and workers and to put forward new ideas t r»
products or ways of organizing.
In this context, the idea ot differently positioned ac-
tors being active participants in a process of meaning-
making — a version of the new idea of ‘culture’ — is
attractive to managers. The image is associated with
rhetoric about empowerment. Workers and managers
are “trained’ to make decisions in teams taking every-
one’s perspective into account. Their attention is also
’trained’ on this highly visible, apparently transparent
decision making, as if power were dispersed and the
organization decentred. M artin’s work in the United
States (1994) and my work (Wright 1991 ) and students’
dissertations in the UK indicate that workers are often
11
 Gi”‹›up tt›r Uchates in
AntlJr‹›j›‹›l‹›yi al Theory.
I ,certy, CIit”fOrd. 1973.
(.ir//«rr .i hew Y ‹ark: Basic
(›i in iy. Paul. 1987. There
ñ ni/iroyofi›,j›' 9: 403-7.
Hall, Stuart. 1993.
‘C“uliure. c‹immunit›'.
n ai ion ’ € ii//uryf Sriir/i‹•.i 7:
Fla rvc j . Penelope. 1996.
Kuhn. ]elS. )U91
7’fir .be›‹ Riy ñf.' /•r›/i/ir.›',
,Wy rkrt,‹ riiizJ C’ifi:riisfi if.
L‹›nd‹i n M acmi1 I an.
Kroeber, A. L. :ind
K luc k hohn, Cl3'de. 19fi 2.
Cambri dye. MA.: Paper s of
itie Peabt›tly Museum
XLV’11: I
Lâ 'i Strauss. Claude. 1973
M acdonal d, Sharon (ed. )
Martin. Emil y. 1994.
— 1997. Managing
A rncricans: polic)'
and
changes in the meanings of
work and the sell' in Shore,
Cris and W right. Susan I
eds) Aiyhroyo1t›¿5 i›[Polu i
Lucien Tay lor (cd.)
Vi swil i› iii,p I fir•r›rv.
London: R out led gc.
\l‹irlev, 10a vid and Chen,
C«ltu r‹4 I .5rnriir.i‘.
London: Rouiledpe.
f)rtncr. Sherry. 19h4.
‘Fhcory in anthropology
si rice the iixties.
Peiers, T. and \'iaterman,
C’r›, rtponi‹'.\. New Y‹irk:
Harper and R ow'.
l*ondy, C. and Mitrotf’. I.
1979. ’13c vond ‹›pen s j sten
model s ‹if tirganixation ’ in
Cummings, L. and Slav',
R. (cd)Araur‹A i
12
ambi valent, experiencing empowerment in some re-
spects, yet perceiving the gap between corporate
rhetoric and the frequent reorganizations, ‘shakeouts’. ‘de-
layering’ and re-locations, imposed l’rum the top down.
Just as the rhetoric of ‘organization as culture’ highlights
participation and empowerment, yet workers see another
material reality in the shadows. so Harve y noticed that at
the Expo’92 cr›rporations high I ighted certain aspects of
their ‘culture’ for the consumer, yet other aspects were
obscured. Corporations used new technologies to display
transparently and retJex ively how ‘culture’ was
constructed ihrough multiple per- spectives, ct›nnectedness
and networking. What they excluded frs m the
representation of thi s world, where according t‹a Fuj itsu
‘the only frontiers are in your mind’ (Harvey 1996:1 1 I
), was the organization of rela- tions of pr‹sduction. S
imilarly, the use of‘ ‘culture’ in organizational management
has a partial ellect: it en- courages reUexive analysis or the
supposedly empt›wer- ing relations between workers, but
does not analyse how these relations are situated within an
international organization of capital and power.
This relationship between the hi ghlighted foreground
of local i zed partici pattern and empow’erment and the not-
completely-obscured political and economic back- ground,
is echoed in the management literature. Even
am‹ing those writers who most avidly espouse ‘organiz-
ation as culture’ (e.g. Schein 199 I, Smircich 1955)
there is a sliding ot definitions, from the new i dea uf
‘cut ture’ as a continuous process of meaning mat ing
into the old idea of “culture’ as a ‘thing’ which man-
‹igers could define trom above and act upon in a system
ot command and control. 1 will examine how Geertz.
the anthropologist most quoted in organizational
studies, is used in this literature in harder to indicate
how this elision occurs and what are its effects.
One phrase from Geertz i s used above all in cirgani z-
ation studies and by training consultants:
man | sic ] is an animal suspended in webs ot signi Iicancc
$h)e himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs (
1973:
Geertz used the above phrase in an article about a
sheep raid in Morocco. H is aim was to interprct the
different constructi‹ans that the actors— a Jewish mer-
chant, Bcrber tribesmen and a French cr›lonialist
placed on a sequence of events. Each sought to make
their interpretation of events definitive as they ‘tripped
over’ one another’s purposes: pursuing trade, de1’endinp
honour and establishing dominance. The three actors
were in unequal relatit›ns ot power and had difterent
personal abilities to impose ther r meanings on events.
Geertz make s clear that he was studying the interaction
between three ways oi‘ making si gnil icance f rom one
sequence of events. He specifically w’as not trying to
i solatc the elements oi‘ ’a culture’, nor specify the rela-
tions between those elements, nor characterize the
w’hole as a system organi zed around core symbols
( 1973: 17). He was not suggesting that all three actors
were caught in the same way i n ‹me w'eb.
Geertz used this sequence tif events to illustrate how
a merchant and dissident tribes challenged yet suc-
cumbed to French dominance at the early stages of co-
lonialism. It is appropriate fr›r organizational re-
searchers to refer to this article w'hen looking tc› anthro-
pology t‘or new ways t›f analysing ‘organization as cul-
ture’ in a period of equally mc mentous global econ-
omic and political change. However. in thi s literature
an anthropological focus on contestalion and power is
absent. For example, Smircich ( 1 953) starts off in lan-
guage precursive ‹if Street’s ( 1993, quoted above) when
shc suggests that that ‘culture is something an organize-
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 14 No 1 , February 1998
Copyright ©2000. All Rights Reserved.
tion how’ , rathcr than ‘something an organizati‹in i',› ’
( I '9b3: 347). Tt› advance thi s view, shc describes
Geertz’ s approach which, she accurately concludes. en-
ables organizational an‹i1ysts tr› {arr›bleiraii ze the ct›n-
cept of organizutit›n ‘for the researcher seek s to
examine the basic prt›cesses by which gri›ups tel‘ people
ence that allow the p‹assi bility ct organic.ed activity’
( 1983: 351 ). At this point. there i s a st i ding trom new
to old ideas of culture. She claims Geertz"s toe us has
much in common with organixatitanal leaders’. as both
are c‹incerned z'ith ‘how tti create and maintain a sense
of organizatit›ii, and how to achieve common interpreta-
tions of situations s‹a that coordinated action is p‹issible
leadership can best be understood as the management
tel’ meaning and the shaping ot interpretations’ (ifi.).
Geertz has been appropriated as a tool ‹›t’ management
and his idea of ‘culture’ which had some o1 the ele-
ments of ct›ntestation and process develtipcd by the
new ideas of ‘culture’, has been converted into the old
idea of ‘culture’ as an entity to be acted on trom above.
Where ideas vt’ ‘culture’ are being used to manage self’-
motivated, flexibly-networking and team -tt›rming staff
through ideas of empowerment, it is even more import-
ant that analysts should not, as organi National studies
have tended to do in the past, take a manager’ s perspec-
tive on workers as the objects of‘ stud y (Wright 1994).
The focus should be on how managers are deploy ing
both told and new ideas ot’ ‘culture’ in order to gain
workers’ active participation in new ways of orp•anizing
producti‹in, prot'it and power.
Culture and development
I n my thi rd case, ‘culture’ is entering a new domain,
overseas develt›pment, with the help of anthropologists.
Two examples are used, which both refer to old ideas
of ‘culture'. 1 n the first example. an international
agency, UNESCO, in its vision tit’ a new ethical world
order, maps out a world made of ’cultures’ as discrete
entities, without engaging with the issue ot contestation
over the p‹awer to define. I n contrast, in the second
example Kayapo leaders have used ethnographic film to
assert their own def‘inition of their ‘culture’ and used
the strategies others have used against them tr› chal-
lenge the processes that have marginalized them.
UNESCO’ s 11995) report Our C.i eatii’e Fivers iry
marks the culmination ot the UN decade for culture and
dcvelt›pment. This was an opportunity for anthropolog-
ists to have an ‹overt influence on the use of the concept
“culture’ and several world famous anthrr›pologists con-
tributed to its definition. The report argues for two de-
finitions of ‘culture’ First, it takes up the argument
made by development anthropoltigi‘.sts that ‘culture’ is
not just one domain of life (like economics, politics,
re1igion) but is ‘constructive, constitutive and creati v’e’
of all aspects of‘ life including the economy and devel-
opment. Second, it argues that the world is made up of
discrete ‘cultures’ or peoples. The neglecl of ’culture’
in the first sense within ‘c ultures’ in the sect›nd senxe
has caused development efforts to t’ail ( 199.5: 7). Frus-
trated expectations coupled with globalization, and the
collapse of the bipolar world order ( 1 99a: 9, 2fi), it is
argued. have led to confrontations between narrow
group identities over scarce resources ( 1995: 9) which
have been manipulated into violence ( 1995: 1 6).
Whereas failed development gives rise to this destruc-
tive aspect of cultural identities of ‘peoples’, successful
development would result in a flourishing ot’ culture,
creativity and progress.
 This argument rests on a particular view of cultural
diversity. An introductory quote from Marshall Sahlins
defines culture as ‘the total and dislinctive way of life
of a people or a society’ ( 1994 quoted in UNESCO
l99ñ: 2 I ). This old x'iew of ‘culture’ is supported by a
paper by Lévi-Strauss (initially written for UNESCO in
1952 and revised in 1973), from which the title of the
report is drawn. Levi -Strauss put foru'ard what Eriksen
( 1997) calls an archipelago vision of the world as made
up of ‘peoples’ each with ‹i radically different “culture’
1 ike a string of separate islands (the view contested by
Merry, above). In the report, st›metirnes a ‘people’ is
equated with a country, although it is also said that the
world ctinsists of 10,000 distinct societies in 200 states
( 199.5: 16). Unfortunately. according t‹ the report,
people are mixing as never before ( 1995: 9). Instead,
Heriimiii g in their distinctiveness should be encouraged, as it is by
A.T., looking across bt›undaries between distinct cultures that
Auyu,s’t 1987. people gain ideas for alternative ways txt’ living. The
report’s recipe for creativity, experimentation, innova-
tion and the dynana ie of progress is a di versity of dis-
tinct entities with clear boundaries ( 1995: 15). Human
civili zation depends on creative diversity.
Levi -Strauss has provided UNESCO with a map ot a
flat world. The mosaic ot cultures is reminiscent of
I 93()s social anthropology. It misses the dimension of
‘culture’ as a process of contestation over the pt›wer to
dctine organizing concepts — including the meaning of
‘culture’ itself. In the report an unidentil’ied voice dt›es
the defining and disguises or di sclaim s its own power as
common sense. It is envisaged that in this plural world,
nation-states, rather than tryi ng to creatc nation- wide
cultural homogeneity, shrauld encoura be diverse ethnic
groups within their borders to con tribute to a civic
ccimmunity with shared values. Similarly, cultural
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 14 No 1, Fehruury 199%
tlryclit i¿«/iamd dr8avir›ii r. Reinhold, Sue 1993.
Creenw ich CT.: JAI P. Local conflict arid
di versity in the world should be protected by a code of
global ethics, on which the report thinks the world can reach
con.sensus. I n setting out the parameter.s o1‘ this global
ethical code the undefined voice of the report begins to
make value judgments. Only ’cultures’ that have ’tolerant
values' (whose idea of tolerance?) would be respected
and protected by the global code. Of course, ‘repulsive’
(in whose view'!) cultural practices should be condemned
( 1 995: .54). A reported criticism t›f human rights t’or
fostering an incli vi dualism whi ch is alien tn non-western
values, receives the repl y ‘Human rights is not unduly
individualistic (by whose criteria] — it is just an
appropriate way to regurd all humans as equal " (I 995:
41 ). UNESCO’s vision of a code of glo- ba1 ethics to
tarder a plural world rests on a cc›ntradic- tion between
respecting all cultural values, and makin s
value judgments about acceptable and unacceptable
diversity.
In contrast to UNESCO’s top-d‹›wn grand plan f‹›r a
pluralism of bounded cultures, even these old ideas of
'culture’ work very differently when their det’inition is
in the hands t›f indigenous people. Wagner ( 1975 ) ar-
gued that in the very act of fieldwork anthrtaptilogists
’ invent’ u ‘culture’ (in the old sense) for a people. An-
thropologists plunge into situatic›ns which arc beyond
their inter perst›nal and practical competence. To cope
with this. they encourage the msel res by thinking that
they are dealing with a ‘thing’ and they can learn h‹iw
it ‘w‹irks’. St›me people in the host society gain insight
into the anthropologist’s perspective — often w’hilst
trying to control and domesticate her or him and tor
the t‘irst time perceive their daily life as a thing that
works in patterned ways. The anthropologist proceeds
as il what is being studied is u culture’. In the process,
what people had hitherto experienced as an embedded
 ‘positive images’ and
Section 28. Unpublished
D.Phil. thesis, U. of
Sussex.
Sahlin.s, Marshall. 1994.
*›\ brief’ c ultural history' tit'
”culture” ’. paper prepared
liar rhe World Commissit›n
on Culture and
I Je›'elopment, August.
Said, Edward. 1978.
£1men/o li.I’m.
Harmond.sworih: Peng uin.
culture'/’ in P. Frost, L.
Moore, \fi. Louis, C.
Lundberg arid J. Martin
L‹indon: Sage.
Seitlel, Gill. ) 9hfi.
‘Culture, nuti‹in and race
in the B riiish and French
New Ri Chi’ in Levitas. kuth
way of I ite becomes objectified and verbalized in which deflect attention from questions like here' is
Wagner’s terms, invented — as ‘culture’ author-ity constructed, wh‹a contrt›1s the techntilogy,
Terence Turner provides an example from his tield- who holds thc camera, who is depicted as active anal work
among the Kayapo in Braxil. Twenty-tive years w'ho us passivc and marginal? (Moore, R. I '9•74). They ago,
he found 700 of the 800 members ot one group presented themselves as a homogcnetaus and bounded had
died of disease. Missionaries provided medicine in group, “the Kayapo’, so successt‘ully that even the ai-
exchange for the Kayapo’s adopting western cltithes, thropologist. whoa should have n‹iticed the pr‹icess by
building their village along a street. and suppressing which they contested anti constructed thei r c‹›inmunul
their ceremonials. A state organization ctintrolled their '‹authentic vt›ice", does not ment it n it.
trade and communication with the outside, and einbez- They detined ‘culture’ for themselves and uscd it ti›
zled thcir cash from the nut crop. The Kayapo feft de- set thc terms of thei r relations with the ‘outside world’.
pendent and in a situation over which they had in› con- 1 n a history spanning t’orty years, missionaries, govern-
trt›l. ment i›t tic ial s. the Kayap‹i, anthropoloeists, internet-
Turner saw his role as an anthropologist as ‘uncc›ver- tional agencies and non {Government agencies had all ing
the authentic social and cultural system beneath the compcted tier the power to detine a key ct›ncept, “cul-
corrosive underlay’ (199 I: 29 I ). He I ound hi s authentic ture’. Mi ssionaries and government agencies initially
culture in the surv iving social and ceremt›nial rituals had used the concept to detine an entity thal could be
which, to him. reproduced Kayapo as social persons in acted upon, producing di sempowerment and depend-
a moral universe. The Kayapt› did not see it 1 ike that: it ency amt ng the Kayapo. The Kayapo strategy to w rest
was just the way they did things. Thcy did not have a control of‘ this ct›ncept from mi ssionaries and gtivern-
concept through which to objectity and label their ment otticials and turn it against them was part ot’ a

— I 9h7. "l’he white
Jiscursyc ‹rdcr: the Brii sh
Ken' kigh’s d Recourse un
«Omrul rac,n dirt
.S i/i.if›ury Fe i.'iew'’ in
Zai”ula, Iris, van Hii k, Teun
and
J‹›hn Ben,|amins.
Sinireieh, L. 1983.
’C‹,nuep% of culture anU
— 198a. Is lhe concept
of* culture a paradigm for
understanding organizations
dna OUFS01xeS'?‘ In F'**'
Pelcr. Mt›‹›rc, Larry, Lt›ui ,
Mar)'l Rees and Lundberp,
Craig (eel s) (Jrk on ion fir»s/
$tocking, George. 1974.
“I'h r Shut in j of Altte ri‹-cii i were the shorts, T-shirts and haircuts that had appeased
Anilii opolog x', I sx.i- In11. A the missionaries; with men’s bare chests, body orna-
’Fhompsun, L. and Byr:inn.
Culture. Clevedon. Av‹in:
British Association for
Applied Linguistics in
association with
Turner, Terence. 199 I .
‘Representing, resisting.
rethinking’ in St‹›ckiny,
Gc‹›rye (ed. ) C"u/r›/ /u/
p W isct›nsin: NJ. o1
Wi4ci›nsin
Turner. Victcr. 1974.
/Jruitiu.S, fi1'elJ.i ‹1n‹I
M‹•I‹//›/ir›r,S'. jtha«a, NY:
l•rin1ilivy Culture. *°•
Yt›rk: Harper.
C’reuriv'e l9ieer.sin'. Report of
the Wofld Comml8.Sl()n O
such a concept to deal with their situation: to give them
an identity and distinguish themselves as a ‘culture’ on
a par with other indigenous people and v'/s-ñ- r'/i the t‘erent effect, depending on who is doing the rlefining.
dt›minant natitinal society in an inter-ethnic state sys-
tern.
Turner says that the Kayapo were visited by many
anthropologists 2ñ years ago who respectfully sought to
learn and record Kayapo ‘culture’. He says that anthro-
poh›gists were innocent of the pol it ical implications ot
participant observation. Htiwever, the Kayapo
reuli Zed that u. hat missionaries and state admini strattirs
used as justit‘ication ior subtirdinatit›n and exploitation.
another set ot‘ Westerners valued highly. ‘Culture".
reptart. which had seemed an impediment, rule' appeared as a
resource to negotiate their co-existence with the d‹›mi-
nant society.
After a Di.\’‹lf›fiieuriny Wol IJ documentary was made,
the Kayapo sought further documentaries so us to reach
the sympathetic elements in thc west. When they ar-
ranged to meet the Brazilian government tti oppose the
Altamira dam. they choreographed themselves tor the
western mediu in order to gain support of the western
audience and add pressure on the government. Gone
ment and long ritual dances, the Kayapo perf‹armed
their ‘culture' as a strategy in their increasingly confi-
dent opposition to the state.
The Kayapo were ehceptional in the Amazon area in
not only obtaining f unding for their owti video cameras
and training t’or their ti I m cre ws. but al so in surviving
in sul’ficient numbers and having the economic and
phys ical strength to rest st their oppression. Turner says
that by the 1990s the Kayapo had obtained videos,
radios, pharmacies, vehic les, drivers and mechanics. an
aeroplane to patrol their land, and even thei r own
missionaries. Supported by machinery hitherto associ-
ated with dependency, these now-consummate ethnic
politicians had learnt to objeclify their everyday lit’e ‹is
‘culture’ ( in the old sense) and use it as a resource in
negotiations with government and international agen-
cies.
Kayapo politicians seem to have been t‘ully aware ot
dealt with contests among themset v’es over the power to
define. They exploited the way the old idea of ‘culture’
Tasks power differentials within groups and they bor-
rowed western filmic tropes of real ism and authenticity
and pol it ical survival.
Turner shows that ‘culture’ can be used to very dif’-
The UNESCO Report, Our Cre‹itii'e Di versitv. seems to
be seeking the positive outcomes from the autonomous
definition of culture evident among the Kayapo. How-
ex'er it neglects to see that the mows taf creativity that it
associates with vigt›rous ‘cultures’ is a product of con-
tinutiu s assertion of the ptiwer to define in a pr›litical their
process involving local, national and internati renal ac-
tors. This political dimension of meaning making, well
understtiod by Kayapo ptiliticians, is a dynamic which
is absent t’rom the UNESCO
Conclusion
I have distinguished between two sets of’ ideas about
culture in anthropol‹agy: an older set of ideas which
equates ‘a culture’ with ‘a people’ which can be del i -
neated with a boundary and a checklist ot charac-
teristics; and new meanings of ‘culture’, as not a ‘thing’
but a p‹ilitical process of contestati‹an over the power to
detine key concepts, including that of ’culture’ itself.
Earlier thi s century, anthropologists used the old ideas
ot ‘culture’, the constructit›n of an objective classifica-
tion of people. as a strategy for appearing t›utside of
politics. Now anthropologists who adcapt new ideas of
“culture’ are compelled to recognize that academic de-
t’initions of ‘culture’ are themsel ves positi on ed and pol-
itical and therefore a resr›urce f’or anthropologists and
uthers to use in establishing or challenging processes of
domination and marginalization.
‘Culture" in both its old and new senses has been
introduced into many new domains in the l98t)s and
199()s, including cultural racism and multiculturalism,
cc›rporate culture and culture and development. Some-
times anthropologists have been directly in volved, as in
preparing the UNESCO report or fil ming the Kayapo.
Sometimes politicians or managers have appealed to
‘anthropological ideas of’ culture’ fi‹ir legitimacy. Either
way, unihropologists are implicated in the politicization
of ‘culture’
ln the political strategies explored in this paper, ac-
tors have deployed ‘culture’ in a number ot different
wuys and w ith dittei ent material effects. British New
Right politicians have appropriated the new idea of
‘culture’, turned it into a euphemism for race, and mo-
bilized it to reinforce exclusion and marginalization. ln
‘c‹irporate culture’, old and new ideas of ‘culture’ have

14 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 14 No 1 , February 1998

€’u1 i tire and 19i›'ersity, l‘aris:
LI N ESC11 Pu bli › |i in #.
\\‘‹1gncr. k‹iy. I '77fi . ‘/ lits
L'hic.I¿‹›: L!. ‹›l Chica¿‹› P.
/ 7‹Xñ / VT(J.
Harn\cndh\v‹›rtfi:
l*ci ¿uin.
- I ‘J7(›. /t‘‹’\’\t’r›/ ‹/.\.
L‹›nd‹›n: F‹›ritund.
W right, us‹in. I ‘JU I .
‘I-v:iI i:iti‹›n ‹›l the
I'vfi‹ld Iuxhr‹›u h: ?Ie\‘cIand
(1f'y rJ ii r..ofir›ri. . Ltir1d‹a n.
R‹iutletl c.
- 1997. ‘C ti llure in
S‹icial Develt›pment
'\dministratit›n, L‹›nJ‹›n, 28
been used as tt›ols ot’ man‹igcment. of ten sliding l’rt›m
‹inc t‹i the other, in strategies to harness wtirkers’ active
purticipatit›n in a process of mcaning-making which
managers ul ti iratel y reserve the pow'er to def’ine and
control. The Kayapca provide an example of’ indigeru›us
ptil itic ians asserting their own det’inition of ‘culture’
and using it to set the terms of their relations xv ith the
outside world. They were c‹ nsciousl y using old ideas
‹ I ‘culture’ with an appreciation of the politics oi‘ its
construction. The voice of Kayapo politicians. presen-
ting an app‹irently consensual 'authentic culture’ of ‘the
Kayapo›’, has succeeded in being heard i n national and
international forums. The UN EfiCO report aspi red tier
‘cultures’ in the old sense to have the creativity and
dynamism of the Kayapo. However, the report did not
cc›ntrt›nt the central issue in the Kayapo case: that they
were engaged in a struggle with the state and interna-
tional agencies over the power to define. I nstead, btith
the UNESCO report and the British New Right’ s cultu-
ral racism deploy a disembodied voice, ‘we’, t‹i auth -
‹Prize a top down definition of ‘culture’ .is if it were
common sense ‹ar ‘natural’ Thi s strategy. 1 i ke the old
anthropological strategy tit objectificatit›n. tries to mask
or erase the politicization of culture.
It is di sappointing that the oppt›rtunity prt›vided by
the UNESCO report, tr›r anthrt›po1ogists to make an
impact on the pt litical use of‘ ‘culture’ in ways w'hich
wt›uld benet’it the disadvantaged and marginal i zed. was
n‹it used morc effectively . It we aim to influence local.
national and international processes by which pet›ple
are impoverished and di sempt›wered, it behoves us tt›
reflect on ‹our own anthropological analy ses ‹)l how pol-
iticians, policy advisers and dccisir n-makers are deplo-
ying old ‹Ind new ideas of “culture’ We might learn
from our anal yses t›f the pol it ical stratcgies ct’ others
how to intcrvene more effectively ourscl vcs in the pt›l-
iticization of ’culture’. In the cr›ntext of recent laments
abt›ut anthropolt›gy’ s loss of authc›rity and diminishing
relevance to the study ‹at contemporary cultural pro-
cesses (due in part to the advance of cultural studies,
GDAT 1996), such reflection might also help restr›re a
much needed critical edge to the discipline. O

HOW TO TRAP A GIRAFFE

i.m. Alfred Gell

Oppose the empty time ot waii ing Against a sudden catastrophe.

Egg the girai“fe on
To complete a jigsaw
When he comes like somet›ne Certain he’s not drunk
To the homely v’icinities
Ot the negative girallc you’ ve dug.

Convince the girai‘fe he’s attune

By communicating a deadly absence. Use the distance
Between hint and his water. Crazy-pax'e a lake
So that any descending Head will be broken.

See the giraf”fe as uprights ln a world of ht›rizontals. Employ the poised violence Of dappled javelins.
Broomsticks, ladders And tent-poles,
Then pull aw‹ty the rug.

Get the giral’i‘e to be honest About what he loves.

Then parody it.
A shower of nets. A tree of arrows.

Imagine you are a giratfe And send yoursel f’ postcards Homesick for the veldt,
Filled with wish-you-were-heres. End with the one ab‹ ut
The man who st ipped Into hi s bed
And never came out.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY Vol 14 No 1. February 1995 15