Swindler, Ann - Culture in Action; Peterson & Kern - Changing Highbrow Tastes; Geertz, Clifford - Interpretation of Cultures PDF

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In-depth summary, with copious quotation, of three texts read in Shamus Khan's Introduction to the Social World. ...

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Response to “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies” In her article “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies”, Ann Swindler criticizes traditional understandings of culture and action and proposes her own theory of culture’s effect on action. The traditional model descends from the work of Max Weber, in whose view “human beings are motivated by ideal and material interests,” and assumes that culture creates interests members of society act in the hopes of attaining (274). Parsons supported a similar model in which “values are essences around which societies are constituted. They are the unmoved mover in the theory of action” (274). Both models assume that actions are units, deliberately chosen to attain a culturally constructed goal. Swindler discredits this understanding by interpreting culture as “more like a style or a set of skills and habits than a set of preferences or wants” (275). She claims that actions are strategies not units, for “people do not, indeed cannot, build up a sequence of actions piece by piece, striving . . . to maximize a given outcome” (276). With these interpretations, Swindler divides action into categories with the claim that these strategies are affected differently by culture during settled and unsettled times. The culture of unsettled times she relates to ideology, a “highly articulated, self-conscious belief and ritual system” (279). During unstable times, actions closely adhere to ideology as people are making deliberate effort to change their system of action. However, as ideological demands are not yet traditional or taken for granted, the “concrete situations in which these cultural models are enacted … determine which take root and thrive, and which wither and die” (280). During settled times, however, cultures are more encompassing than the ideologies of unsettled periods, and because “cultural resources are diverse… groups and individuals call upon

the resources selectively” (280). Action is no longer closely guided by ideological values because many ideologies are encompassed within a settled culture. Swindler’s approach illuminates the limited importance of interests and values in driving action and develops the idea that “it is the appropriation of larger, culturally organized capacities for action that gives culture its enduring effects” (283). These arguments lead to new questions about the strength of culture and belief systems as well as the evolution of ideology into common sense.

“Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore” In this article, Peterson and Kern speculate about the “status-group politics influenced by changes in social structure, values, art-world dynamics and general conflict” that increases number of “omnivores” among highbrow fine arts consumers (900). “Highbrow” describes those who, in a music genre preference survey, list classical music or opera as their favorite genre of music over all. “Omnivorousness” is the degree of openness to lower-brow genres, quantified by number of lowbrow and middlebrow genres appreciated. They found that those with highbrow tastes have become more omnivorous over time, not only partaking in lowbrow, marginalized culture but also middlebrow culture. Because young members of this group listened to significantly more lowbrow genres, this shift was a result of “cohort replacement,” whereas all ages liked more middlebrow genres, evidence of “period effects” (903). A regression analysis found that non-highbrow music listeners too “liked more low- and middlebrow genres than they had in 1982, and younger cohorts of non-highbrows liked more lowbrow genres and fewer middlebrow genres than did their older cohorts” (903).

Five theories are proposed to explain the changes in “status-group politics” (905). Structural changes of education, media, and living could have made “elite aesthetic taste more accessible” with migration and class mobility also mixing people with different tastes (905). Efforts to seem tolerant of difference, art-world emphasis on the exotic, and a generational viewing of youth culture “as a viable alternative to established elite culture” are other proposed explanations for shifts toward omnivorousness. They also suggest that lowbrow culture is appropriated as adaptation to “an increasingly global world managed by those who make their way, in part, by showing respect for the cultural expressions of others” (906). Their arguments illustrate the various dimensions in which culture can be interpreted and the importance of understanding each dimension in order to get an encompassing understanding of cultural change.

“Secrets and Misperceptions: The Creation of Self-Fulfilling Illusions” In her article “Secrets and Misperceptions, Sarah Cowan hypothesizes that people are less likely to hear stigmatized secrets, are more likely “to hear secrets to which we are positively predisposed” and that more stigmatized secrets are shared more discriminately (466). Cowan describes the secret as a function of social structure, reflecting power relations and culture. To understand the patterns of secret sharing, she created a survey focusing on how American residents hear, share, and keep secrets of abortion and miscarriage, choosing these two secrets because they target similar demographics but only one is stigmatized. She found that although abortions are more common, these secrets were shared less frequently and that those who did know people who had abortions tended to be pro-choice. Finally, Cowan turned to qualitative survey responses and found that those who had abortions or knew the abortion history of others did not disclose when the act might be stigmatized.

In analyzing instances of sharing the secrets of another, Cowan captures previously ignored, public opinion affecting interactions and provides insight into the social structure behind the sharing of secrets.

“The Interpretation of Cultures” Anthropologist Clifford Geertz immersed himself in Balinese culture and writes this ethnography on the cockfights characteristic of this culture. His ethnography contends that “the cockfight renders ordinary, everyday experiences comprehensible by presenting it in terms of acts and objects which have had their consequences removed and have been reduced . . . to the level of sheer appearances, where their meaning can be more powerfully articulated and more exactly perceived” (443). This description speaks not only to the nature and effects of the cockfighting ritual, but those of cultural rituals in general: they powerfully articulate and give meaning to the mundane....