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Last edited:
23 September, 2005
1
The
Cultural Frames Approach as an Alternative
View to the
Ethnocratic Idea of Culture.
Josep Martí
Spanish
Council for
Scientific
Research (CSIC),
Barcelona
jmarti@bicat.csic.es
To the current
important question of intercultural
relations and
communication, the concept of culture
undoubtedly
belongs. It is not only because of its importance
as a technical
analytical tool but because today the idea of
culture -in the
anthropological sense- goes beyond the
interest of the
academic milieu. The concept of culture has
powerfully
erupted in the political arena; discourses about
preservation of
determined cultural traits or about the need
for cultural
integration of immigrants today belongs to daily
life. In all
discourses regarding ethnic minorities,
nationalism,
immigration, multiculturalism, intercultural
relations, etc.
culture clearly appears as a key concept.
But the question
is now: what are we speaking about
exactly when we
refer to culture? Until what point is the
concept so
drenched of romantic ideologies, concretely of the
Herderian idea of
the Volksgeist, really operative in
understanding our
current reality in a more and more
globalized world?
Every day,
anthropologists become more conscious that
"the concept of
'cultures' and 'societies' as our central
units of
investigation increasingly seem outdated as
regulative
ideas, since they indicate a stability and
boundedness in
social systems which is unwarranted" (Eriksen,
1993: 2). Or in
the words of Roger M. Kessing:
"I will suggest
that our conception of culture almost
irresistibly
leads us into reification and
essentialism.
How often, still, do I hear my
2
colleagues and
students talk as if 'a culture' was an
agent that could
do things; or as if 'a culture' was a
collectivity of
people. Of course, we profess that we
don't really
mean that 'Balinese culture' does or
believes
anything, or that it lives on the island of
Bali (it is all
a kind of 'shorthand'); but I fear
that our common
way of talk channel our thought in
these
directions. Moreover, attributing to 'Balinese
culture' a
systematic coherence, a pervasive
sharedness, and
an enduring quality -so that Bali
remains Bali
through the centuries, and from south to
north, west to
east (even nowadays, despite the
tourists)-
commits us to essentialism of an extreme
kind. Balinese
culture is the essence of Bali, the
essence of
Balineseness." (Kessing, 1994: 302-303)
If it is true
that today anthropologists call more and
more into
question the dominant paradigm in the discipline
which still
defines all societies as unique, virtually self-
sustaining
systems to be understood primarily in their own
terms, according
to their own, presumably unique cultural
logic (Eriksen,
1993: 3-4), the fact is that this dubious view
is well
implanted in the population in general and especially
also still has
great importance in the practice of policy.
The Herderian
idea, which assigned to each Volk its own
ethnic spirit
represented basically by its language and
traditions, was
a progressive idea for that time. From that
point on, people
granted each ethnic group its own personality
and intrinsic
value. Furthermore, the erudite invention of the
Volksgeist
justified the existence of ethnocratic states once
que monarchs had
lost divine justification. Each nation
corresponded to
a spirit and, in the same way, to an ethnic
culture as well.
Moreover, the first folklorists, among
others, were
entrusted to demonstrate this. In this way,
people began to
collect songs, fairly tales and traditions.
Evidently, not
all what was sung, narrated or belonged to the
daily life
accomplished the requirements of what was
considered the
ethnic spirit. However, the erudite Europeans
of that time,
believing in a Volk idealized by romanticism and
in a spirit
which nobody could actually see, built their
selective
criteria. The erudite ones took care of cleansing
3
the folklore
collections of all which was not ethnic enough
1
.
In this manner,
people began to speak of "one nation: one
culture".
This idea of
culture is the reason that, if necessary,
the term
culture can be used as a synonym for nation, state,
people
(in the sense of Volk) or even race. That is why we can
speak of
French, Italian or German culture, for instance. Here
we can see that,
actually, the use of the term culture
sometimes is not
so far away from the use we gave to the term
race some
decades ago, a term that today has lost all
credibility as
an analytical tool for anthropology. It is also
clear that
through this use, we give mystical and unreal
components to
culture, unreal components which, nevertheless
are easily used
in power struggles; in part also because of
their very
vagueness: "Symbols are effective because they are
imprecise"
(Cohen, 1992: 21).
This manner of
understanding culture is, evidently, a
consequence of
the marked ethnocratic conception we have from
our societies, a
conception which had a notable thrust through
romanticism and
which today still has great force. We are used
to dividing the
earth in discrete units of nations or states,
each of them
with a different color on our maps; and we do the
same with
culture. It is as though culture, in general, could
be fragmented
according to these categories, in this way
showing
different organic, systemic and discrete units.
According to our
ethnocratic comprehension of the world,
we speak very
easily of Basque, Spanish or English culture,
for instance,
without knowing very well what these labels
truly signify.
We do this in relation to a territory whose
culture is then
organized conceptually and practically through
collections of
objects, texts and rituals through which
distinctive
signs are affirmed and reproduced (García
Canclini, 1995:
92). For anthropologists it will be very
difficult to
define the culture of a particular country
exactly, but
they will easily see that, according to the
4
bearers of the
culture in question, the different constitutive
elements of the
culture can be classified into three different
groups:
A.
Representative elements
B. Neutral
elements
C. Rejected
elements
A.
Representative elements. The idea of representative
culture is
narrowly related to the ethnicity phenomenon and to
those cultural
products, which have to do with the expression
of ethnicity.
When people are talking about Sardinian, German
or Catalan
culture, for example, generally the anthropological
idea of
culture is not meant. When within anthropology we
speak of the
culture of a certain society, we are referring to
the totality of
cultural elements which belong to this
society.
However, in the case of the representative culture,
it is a question
of determined cultural elements which have
been selected
according to the criteria of concrete
narratives. Such
elements, to a large extent, are based on
criteria not
only of declared cultural paternity -that which
has been created
by autochthonous or what proceeds from a
blurred
antiquity and is supposed to have been created by our
forbears- but
are also marked by value and exclusivity
criteria. It is
a question of cultural elements, which can
proceed from the
so-called high culture and also from the
popular one. In
short, we have to deal with those cultural
elements
appearing in publications which treat the culture of
a particular
country. The stereotypical reproductions of these
cultural
elements very often appear on the shelves of
souvenirs shops
and, of course, these cultural elements always
play an
important role in ceremonies with representative value
for a given
country. If we take the example of Catalan
culture, for
instance, it is easy to find numerous examples of
cultural
elements which have a high representative value: the
Catalan
language, the architecture of Gaudí, some dances or
foods, etc.
5
B. Neutral
Elements. This group is the most numerous.
There are
cultural elements important for us but because they
do not have
exclusivity traits; or because they are clearly of
foreign origin
in spite of assimilation by the society; or
because of a
lack of social value; we do not relate them
directly to a
given culture. If we continue with our former
example,
Beethoven, tango, the habit of wearing necktie, the
practice of
skiing... It is clear that nobody would relate all
these elements
directly to Catalan culture. Still, they
undoubtedly
belong to the Catalan culture of every day.
C. Rejected
elements. These are cultural elements which
are also
relevant for a given culture, but they are in
contradiction
with the idea of representative culture. People
do not accept
them as their own cultural elements. Thus, the
introduction of
these elements into society is always
attributed to
immigration or modern communications systems.
All societies
have plenty of examples for these kinds of
cultural
elements which, because of ideological reasons, are
refused: For
instance, the fight against the introduction of
English language
in France, or the well-known theses of
Huntington in
his book The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of
World Order. One of the main conclusions of the
book is that the
rulers of the Western countries have to
safeguard the
purity of the Western values with exclusively
European roots.
Since Western culture is seen to be threatened
through
immigration. Regarding the United States, Huntington
attacks
multiculturalist policy because it puts U.S. national
identity in
danger. According to him, this identity
historically has
always been defined through the legacy of
Western
civilization (Huntington, 1998: 304-305).
The
representative and rejected cultural elements are, in
quantitative
terms much less important than the neutral ones.
Still, they are
very important in the configuration of
reference points
for people's cognitive orientation, which is
very important
for constructing ethnicity.
6
The problem
comes when representative culture and culture
are seen to be
the same. This is namely the rhetoric of
culturalist
ethnicist discourses. They take the part for the
whole. In this
way, people give much importance to what, in
fact, is
conjectural and depends on concrete narratives very
often related to
struggles of power. This, in turn has to do
with the
symbolic construction of reality. In the same way, we
create the
representative culture of our immigrants as well.
To take this
into account is also very important for the issue
of
multiculturalism and intercultural relations. The most
important
conclusion which we can draw from these reflections
is that the
cultural competence of any person will only
coincide in
small part with the explicit contents which people
usually assign
to the representative culture of their society.
In every
society, the real culture and the representative
culture occupy
two different levels:
REPRESENTATIVE
CULTURE
Selection
processes
rhetorical
CULTURE
narratives
Selection
processes
REJECTED CULTURE
7
This manner of
seeing reality is what, in short, has led
to the idea of
national cultures; that is to say to the
concept of
culture as this concept is understood in colloquial
language, when
it is used further as a synonym for race or
nation.
The main problem in using the idea of culture in this
way is that the
idea is based more in ethnicist
presuppositions
than in ethnic ones, the two being completely
different from
one another. Thus, as it has been said,
"Defining a
Culture is a question of defining boundaries that
are essentially
political" (Wallerstein, 1997: 94). Moreover,
as already
stated at the beginning of this paper, the concept
of culture
represents a category not only with potential
analytical value
for the social and humanistic sciences but
has also a wide
social relevance.
Concretely, four
clearly negative aspects derived from
the fact of
understanding culture under the ethnocratic point
of view can be
mentioned:
1. The trend of
understanding the representative culture
as though it
were really the true culture of society.
2. The
standardizing view of the social system from the
cultural point
of view.
3. Cultural
determinism.
4. The
importance given to culture over and above its
bearers.
The idea of the
existence of a national culture distorts
reality because:
(a) This culture will only be a small part of
the total
culture of the population. (b) People assign social
relevance of
this (representative) culture to the whole
population,
which occupies a given territory. However, we now
know very well
that it is impossible to speak of a given
culture as
something concrete and well-defined or of "one
nation, one
culture". The idea of a national culture always
gives a unifying
image hiding the real cultural heterogeneity
8
of a social
system. These ways of seeing reality are not the
most appropriate
-not in order to understand an ever more and
more globalized
world, nor in order to know the true nature of
culture: which
is always subjected to modifications as a
continuous
process of negotiation; which is not given by
nature but
constructed day by day by the individual.
The determinism
inherent in the concept of national
culture
is particularly important in the perception of the
other;
that is to say in the perception of individuals
belonging to or
coming from different social systems. The
notion of
national cultures suggests that the individuals of
the society
x have specific characteristics. This can have
pernicious
social consequences, especially in the case of
societies with
high rates of immigration. We shall remember
that basic
premise of symbolic interactionism, so as William
Thomas
formulated it: "If an individual defines a given
situation as
real, it is real in its consequences" (quoted by
Joseph, 1982:
231). Obviously, if according to what we have
already said
that the idea of national culture will never
coincide with
reality, the danger of this determinism is
clear. Actually,
we often fall back on the idea that "they do
what they do
because they are what they are". And as Friedman
wrote, the key
term here is essentialism (Friedman, 1994: 73).
We could mention
many examples from our daily life through
which the
deterministic character of our idea of culture
appears very
clear. For example, Susan Miyo Asai discusses the
rejections
suffered by an American Nisei (second generation of
Japanese
immigrant) as an opera singer after having completed
his academic
training in Chicago. He was refused simply
because he was
identified with Japanese culture, in spite of
the fact of
having been born and educated in the United States
(Miyo Asai,
1995: 434).
According to the
ethnocratic view, culture is perceived
rather as a
supra-subjective entity, which has attributes such
as persistence,
homogeneity, continuity and territoriality
(Wicker, 1996:
20). The concept of culture experiences a clear
9
reification
process, as if culture could exist on the margin
of its bearers
or social agents. So, for instance, very often
we speak of
preserving traditional cultures, giving them an
intrinsic value
without asking us if this always corresponds
to the general
interest of society or of individuals.
With all those
reflections, I do not pretend to deny the
possible
existence of certain cultural traits, which can be
characteristic
for a given collective, which can be defined as
a nation. It
cannot be denied that there also exist cultures
in this sense.
The problem lies in giving too great of an
importance to
this notion of culture and at the same time of
ignoring or at
least undervaluing other cultural
configurations
in which people are immersed. Anthropology has
the duty of
changing, gradually, the ethnocratic view of
culture through
indicating different perspectives, which can
be more
adequate for the reality in which we live. One
possibility is,
for instance, to think in terms of cultural
frames
(CFs).
A cultural
frame (CF) is constituted by different facts
and cultural
elements, which are articulated among one
another. In
addition, a CF presupposes the existence of a
systemic code,
which is shared by the social agents who
participate in
the frame. All culture -in the singular and
anthropological
sense of the term- is organized through a
countless whole
of such frames. These frames can reach large
dimensions
transcending state borders; for instance, Western
medical
practice, military industry or universalistic
religions. Yet
these frames can also be infinitely more
reduced, such
as the frame constituted by a family, a company
or a hiking
club. In short, a CF is all which can be
considered a
system and which includes the active presence of
social agents.
Its main characteristics are the following:
1. The focal
point, which constitutes, in fact, the defining
trait of each
CF. The focal point can be of a diverse nature:
an ideology,
such as nationalism; a human collective such as
10
organized
groups of homosexuals; politicaly administrated
borders such as
the state, etc.
2. The
existence of social agents -individuals- who create and
participate in
these frames.
3. The
existence of a polydimensional whole of facts and
cultural
elements, which are articulated among one another.
The life of any
person can be culturally defined through
the
participation of such person in the different CFs. It is
precisely
because of this reality that, actually, all persons
are culturally
different. For reasons of birthplace, gender,
age,
profession, etc., we could hardly find two people with
identical
participation in their respective CFs. Thus,
culturally, a
person should be defined not by means of the
ethnocratic
sense of culture that we use to label this person
(Catalan,
Spanish, German culture, etc.), but by means of the
whole of
CFs in which he or she participates. A particular
person, for
instance will be culturally defined through the
facts of being
born in Barcelona, a woman, belonging to the
60's
generation, being a lawyer, etc. In addition to these CFs
of indubitable
importance in the structuring processes, this
particular
person participates in many other frames of greater
or lesser
importance in defining her life: she belongs to the
ambit of opera
followers, the internauts, the hiking scene...
The addition of
all these participations in the different CFs
which form the
vital space of the person constitutes his or
her cultural
definition. Moreover it is obvious that within
the same
country we will never find two persons, who according
to these
criteria, respond to the same cultural definition. In
the same way,
in the current globalised world, a person who,
for instance,
has been born in the Netherlands will share many
CFs with
people of many countries. Within this perspective,
returning to
the above mentioned case of the frustrated opera
singer who was
the son of Japanese immigrants, it becomes
easier to
understand the nonsense underlying the rejection of
him in his
profession. Competence in a given field, such as
11
the opera of
the previous example, should not be measured by
the
culture to which a person is socially ascribed but by the
degree of
identification which that person has reached within
the CF
in question, by the ability of negotiating the meanings
of the frame
and of acting efficiently according to its
inherent set of
values.
As has already
been stated, one of the basic conditions
for speaking
about a CFs is the existence of social agents,
which create a
frame and participate in it. This implies a
certain degree
of identification among the different people
who share a
given system; with the whole set of meanings,
norms and rules
of behaviour which the system presupposes.
Obviously, this
does not mean that all social agents
participate in
the same manner in a given CF simply because of
the fact that,
as already stated, there are not two
individuals who
correspond to the same cultural definition. In
the music
field, for instance, a jazz devotee will have many
things in
common with other people who also identify
themselves with
this musical style. But these people will
manifest enough
differences so that their respective manners
of living and
experiencing jazz will be never identical. A
person who has
studied composition in a music high school will
never
experience jazz in the same manner as some one without
any kind of
technical knowledge in music. A person who
inhabits a big
city and can frequently attend musical
performances
will not live jazz in the same manner as a person
from the
countryside.
Every CF
is built by a polydimensional set of facts and
cultural
elements which belong to the ambit of ideas, concrete
products and
actions. We can understand the CFs in terms of
habitats of
meaning as expressed by Ulf Hannerz, according to
the ideas of
the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (Hannerz, 1998:
41-42). The
CF which is constituted by classical Western
music, for
instance, is built by all those sets of ideas
(theory,
meanings, values, etc.) which imply the creation of
concrete
products (from varied musical forms to instruments,
12
architectonical
spaces for auditions, etc.) as well the
actions which
are produced in associated manner in the
elements just
mentioned (concerts, recordings, teaching,
musical
critique, etc.).
In each
CF, as in the above example of classical music,
the existence
of an ideational basis which emically justifies
and explains
the frame in question is very important. This
basis involves
history, understood as a set of narratives;
myths,
theories..., so as well the existence of a specific
code or
symbolic frame which testifies to the established
relationship
between concrete realities and the human
cognitive
system. From the perspective of social agents, the
fact of
participating in a given CF means to share with others
a particular
world of objectivities (Berger, 1999: 25). The
clearest
manifestation of this characteristic of the CF is the
existence of
particular linguistic expressions. In the CF
formed by the
world of classical music, we find a rich set of
lexical
expressions which, proceeding from different languages
have often
become independent even from their original
meaning:
vivo, andante, bravo, cluster, suite,
sarabanda, etc.
A Russian,
Catalan or Japanese composer, for instance, knows
the meaning of
the word cluster within the domain of
composition
techniques, in spite of the fact that this
composer may
not master the English language and does not know
to what this
term exactly refers in the quotidian conversation
of English.
The existence
of a whole or set of values and meanings
only
understandable within the system which constitutes the CF
entails
reference points constituted by those system elements
which
accomplish, to a high degree, the particular horizon of
expectations of
the CF: in the field of a musical CF, for
instance: the
great composers, musicians, the famous concert
halls,
recording companies, etc.
The CFs
do not necessarily have to be identified with a
given
territory; we have to think much more to the contrary.
13
The reality of
increasing globalisation causes
deterritorialization
to be even the rule. This evidently
breaks down
that idea inherent to the ethnocratic concept of
culture, which
identifies cultures with territories. Regarding
our previously
mentioned example of classical Western music,
we find social
agents who participate in this frame in
Germany,
Portugal, Argentina as well in determined social
sectors of
Nigeria, etc. In contrast, this participation -
regarding
territorial boundaries- never occurs in an automatic
or uniform
manner. In all these countries just mentioned,
there are many
people who, because of diverse reasons, do not
participate in
the CFs of classical music.
The
transnational enterprises which today consolidate
within the
globalisation processes may be seen as
illustrations
of the deterritorialized CF. Kenichi Ohmae,
specialist in
the functioning of these companies in the global
market states
it very clearly: the companies have to lose the
links which
bind them to a concrete country; they have to
create a value
system shared by the company directors from the
all over the
world. "You have to be plenty convinced that
people can work
in different social milieus even though these
people do not
belong to these milieus; they belong to the
global
enterprise" (quoted by Hannerz, 1998: 141-142).
Similarly, the
same happens in the musical scene with
reference
points such as Beethoven, the Beatles or Kitaro, for
instance. There
is no doubt that within the nationalist view,
these musicians
can be glorified as German, English or
Japanese. Yet
what actually results pertinent is the
musician's
importance within a given CF -classical music, rock
or New Age-,
which transcends national borders. The musicians
are reference
points for the consumers of Western classical
music, rock or
New Age from all geographic corners of the
planet.
The CFs
form a complex web; although we can grant them a
certain
coherence and autonomy, they obviously interact
continuously
between one another. The infinite possibilities
14
of this
interweaving produce the great diversity of cultural
phenomena. It
has been stated above that deterritorialization
is a
characteristic of the CFs, but we cannot speak in this
sense, in an
absolute way. In addition, nationalistic
movements
constitute powerful CFs and their overlapping with
other
CFs create precisely the image of national cultural
elements. When
we speak of national musics, national foods,
national
architecture, etc., we have to see all of this as the
product of the
interweaving of the CFs of nationalism with
other
CFs such as music, culinary traditions and architecture.
Understanding
the cultural production of humankind
through the
idea of the CF allows as to avoid the fallacy in
which we, for
so much time, have believed; that is putting
culture and
society in the same basket. They are two concepts
that, although
used in determined contexts sometimes as
synonyms, must
not be blurred. This is for a very simple
reason: it is
clear that in our current world, all society
generates
specific cultural traits. However, it is not true
that the
culture of this society has to be limited to such
cultural traits
or that the culture of this society has to
appear in a
uniform manner for all its members. The idea of
culture as a
synonym for society lends itself to reinforcement
and
justification for the idea of the cultural fact as a
"means of
marking out and limiting group entities", as non-
Western
anthropologists have accurately criticised (Gupt,
1997: 139),
especially for the implications which this idea
has had in
Western colonialist history. This ethnocratic view
is,
definitively, what allows us to understand culture in
terms of
national cultures. This also very often implies the
danger of
understanding or conceiving of culture as a system
which can even
be seen to exist at the margin of its creators
and bearers:
the social agents.
I think, then,
that it might be interesting to think more
in terms of
CFs rather to speak of cultures in the sense of
national ones.
All these considerations lead in short to take
force away from
the ethnocratic character inherent in the
15
concept of
culture and gradually reach other views which can
result much
more suggestive and above all more useful. The
idea of nation
and all that it implies (national culture) does
not correspond
in reality to one culture in the holistic and
all englobing
sense of the concept but constitutes simply one
CF more.
The world of a person, a city, a society is built by
many different
CFs. Society x will have its own CF, which in
quality of
construct, can determine a nation, as an imagined
community in
the terms of Benedict Anderson (1983).
Furthermore,
this same society will have a myriad of different
CFs
which, taken as a whole, will allow this society to live
as such. The
very diverse CFs within one society interweave,
overlap among
themselves and very often also contradict each
other and
generate struggles.
When people
speak of national cultures, the trend seems
to be
understand them as closed or self-sustaining systems,
which in fact
define the ideal and idealized bearer of these
cultures. But
what people understand as a national culture can
aspire, at
most, to be representative culture but never the
total culture
of the country's population. How could we really
confound
culture -in the holistic sense of the term- with
national
culture, now that we are more conscious than ever
that each
nation is an imagined community?
As it is
obvious, that all changes radically when we
understand
society as a whole of very different CFs, national
culture being
only one CF more among them. It is evident that
two Italians,
for instance, might feel between them a higher
degree of
proximity than between an Italian and an Australian.
There are
CFs such as sharing the same language or the same
political
administration, which have a great importance for
the structuring
processes. But these CFs, in spite of their
importance,
will never have an absolute validity. This greater
proximity which
these persons of our first example might feel
is not due to
the fact that they share the same national
culture but to
the fact that they might share a major number
of CFs
than in the case between an Italian and an Australian.
16
According to
this perspective, thus, the real culture of
a given
territory, city or whole country will simply be the
addition of all
CFs that we can detect in this ambit. Yet in
this regard,
the idea of real culture for this geographical
ambit will be
very weak. It is weak in the sense that the
concept of
culture which we use in this case does not allude
to a
well-integrated and internally articulated whole, as the
ideologies of
an ethnicist nature imply when they speak of
national
cultures. Instead, it alludes to diverse set of
different
elements which will never be explainable only
through the
particular characteristics of the territorial
system in which
they occur.
The CFs
generate personalities; in other words, coherent
manners and
characteristics of behaviour according to the
contents and
values of these CFs. However we should not
understand this
important aspect as if the individual were
exclusively a
product of these CFs, because on an other level,
they are the
persons who, in fact, precisely create, choose
and modify the
CFs. As already stated, to think in terms of
CFs
signifies to understand the person plunged into a myriad
of CFs
which, as a whole, will never be the same as the
national
culture. In fact in daily life, the different kinds
of CFs
help to define the kinds of relationships, which can be
established
between people. Consider for instance: our reality
as Westerners
when a Moroccan enters our life because he has
married our
sister; or we share the bench with a Philippine in
a Catholic
church every Sunday; or we have an Algerian as a
colleague in
our work. We know these people as social agents
from some
CF in which we also participate: the CF of family,
the frame of
the religion, the frame of work. From this point
on, we will
know people by their proper names. Thus, the
diffused ideas
previously held which we could have about the
Maghrebi or
Philippine cultures lose importance. This is
unless we have
internalized racist discourses to such a degree
that the
interpersonal relationship results fatally poisoned.
17
If the fact of
seeing and understanding people according
to the schemes
of the CF through we establish mutual contact
is something
often practiced by the common sense of our daily
life, we can
think that this is what anthropology also has to
pursue. This
would help us to liberate individuals of those
constructs
which represent national cultures. The most
important
differences between understanding the individual
basically as a
social agent of a national culture or according
to the view of
the CF are the following:
1. National
culture is easily understood as a
determinative
for individuals. This determinism disappears or
at least loses
intensity if we understand the person as a
subject of many
different CFs; not because other CFs could not
also present
determinative traits (gender for instance), but
above all
because of diversification. In this manner, then, in
front of the
idea of perceiving a person basically as having
Zulu, Moroccan
or German personality, we are confronted with a
person
configured by many different personalities. This allows
us much better
to understand the social agents as individuals
2
.
2. A given
person participates in many of these CFs, but
not all people
of the same society share the same CFs. This
allows us to
have more present the culturally heterogeneous
character of
every society.
3. Within the
perspective of the CF, the idea of national
culture has
also its place. In this case, we have to
understand
national culture as a CF with its own ideational
contents
through which the society in question would
subjectively
define its own national characteristics. Still,
we must always
understand this CF as one more among the many
CFs in
which the person participates. This allows us to
relativize the
importance of such a kind of construct.
4. This
perspective of the CFs allows as to grasp much
better the
arbitrariness of the political borders regarding
the cultural
facts. The CFs move clearly through the
18
boundaries of a
concrete society, an aspect that is increasing
with the
current globalisation processes.
Understanding a
person as a subject of many CFs, and each
given person
with his or her particular constellation of CFs
allows us to
come nearer to the sociological theses of
methodological
individualism. According to these theses, all
social
questions, especially the functioning of institutions
should always
be understood as the result of decisions,
actions,
attitudes, etc. of the individual. We should not
conform with
explanations on the basis of the so-called
collectives
(states, nations, races, etc.) (Karl Popper,
quoted by
Esser, 1980: 15); or in words from Esser: "Human
behaviour can
not be explained through the belonging to
collectives and
the characteristics of the framework in which
the individual
is set but through the knowledge of his or her
individual
history, of psychological circumstances and his or
her particular
situation" (Esser, 1980: 15). The person is
plunged into
many different CFs and evidently these CFs imply
conditioners of
a sociocultural nature. Yet in any case, "they
limit the
possibilities of what is possible but do not
determine the
reality" (Boudon and Bourricaud, 1992: 224). In
the area of
intercultural relations we should never forget
that actually
"Cultures do not meet, but people who are their
carriers do"
(Broom, Leonard et alt, 1954: 980). Furthermore,
the perspective
of the CFs can help us to have this important
fact more
present.
The central
idea of the CFs approach is that the view of
a culture as
built by an innumerable quantity of different
frames can
substitute the old ethnocratic conception that
gives an
absolute pre-eminence to a national culture: a
culture
conceived as a subject which, although people admit
the possibility
of the influence of external elements through
transcultural
processes, is viewed above all as a cohesive and
integrated
system; as a direct result of the Herderian idea of
the
Volksgeist. This is an idea, therefore, that we implicitly
or explicitly
carry for far too long already. There is not one
19
country's
culture that is an ontological reality. What in fact
constitutes the
culture of the country is the combination of
many CFs
as they have been described in this paper. There are
CFs with
their focal points inside or outside of the country;
with their
reference points inside or outside of the country;
with a whole of
social agents who participate in them who can
be from inside
or outside of the country as well.
20
NOTES:
1
All this is
perfectly illustrated by the dynamics of folklorism. See for
instance:
Martí, 1996.
2
This also has
consequences for the question of the potential universal
relevance of
discourses about human rights. See about this: Martí, 1999.
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