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Culture
Hans Johst (often attributed
to Hermann Göring):
“When I hear the word
‘culture’ I reach for my
gun” (“I release the safety
catch of my Browning”)
Cyril Connolly
(English
writer):
“When I hear
the word ‘gun’
I reach for my
culture.”
• „I don’t know how
many times I’ve
wished that I’d
never heard the
damned word.”
• (Raymond Williams,
British cultural
theorist)
Binary oppositions (binarities,
dichotomies) (kétosztatúságok)
• subject – object (self – world)
• soul (spirit) - body
• essence – appearance (depth – surface, truth –
lie)
• male- female, sun – moon, day – night
• good – evil, right – wrong
• ecclesiastical – secular
• democracy – totalitarianism
• individual – community, public – private
• Culture - ???
Culture: its etymology
to inhabit
colere
– colony
cultivate
–
protect, worship –
coulter, agriculture
cult
I. Culture as cultivation
• cultura animi - cultivation of the soul
• F. Bacon: „culture and manurement of
minds” )
• (agriculture, body culture , cell culture)
• Nature+culture = fully human
• nature is unfinished; culture: perfection of
nature and not its opposite („cultural
instructions”)
II. Culture as a value-laden term
1. Culture ~ civilisation
vs. barbarity, savagery, primitiveness
(European idea, colonisation)
2. Culture = expression of (national)
spirit (Völkergeist, J. G. Herder)
vs. „others”, aliens
World War One
poster (UK, then
US, 1917)
On club: „Kultur”
On helmet:
„Militarism”
Matthew Arnold:
culture is “a study of perfection, …
perfection which consists in becoming
something rather than in having
something, in an inward condition of
the mind and spirit.”
(Culture and Anarchy, 1869)
III. Anthropological meaning of
„culture”
- Rise of ETHNOGRAPHY and
ANTHROPOLOGY as a discipline
- E. B. Tylor, James G. Fraser, Arnold
Gehlen, Norbert Elias, Bronislaw
Malinowski, Émile Durkheim, Marcel
Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clifford
Geertz
Human being unable to survive in
nature
→ puts culture between
himself and nature
culture = second nature
(Arnold Gehlen, Norbert Elias - German
anthropologists)
Anthropology and ethnography
(from mid- C19)
Small communities ~ laboratories
 “primitive culture” is not really “primitive”
E. B. Tylor (Vict. anthropologist): we should
appreciate “the real culture which better
acquaintance always shows among the
rudest tribes of man”
(e.g. Aborigines)
Anthropology and ethnography
2. Cultures are all different but the fact of
having a culture is a universal human
feature
comparative anthropology
Fraser: The Golden Bough (Az aranyág)
Anthropological meaning of
„culture”
- broad meaning: a distinct way of life (Tylor:
culture is “that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and
any other capabilities and habits acquired by
man as a member of society” (1871)
- neutral
- plural: „cultures” rather than „culture”
- culture: a human universal
- Nature vs. culture again
- Cultural anthropology vs biological anthropology
Raymond Williams (English critic):
“Culture is ordinary. …Every human
society has its own shape, its own
purposes, its own meanings. Every
human society expresses these, in
institutions, and in arts and learning.
The making of society is the finding of
common meanings and directions.”
(1958)
• T.S. Eliot: culture in the widest sense
“includes all the characteristic
activities and interests of a people:
Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes,
the twelfth of August, a cup final, the
dog races, the pin table, the dart
board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled
cabbage, beetroot in vinegar,
nineteenth-century Gothic churches
and the music of Elgar” (1944)
Ethnocentrism
Eskimo – „eaters of raw meat”
Pygmy – „size of a fist”
Hungarian – „alliance of tribes”
Apache – „enemies”
Tsigan – „outcasts”
(magyar, roma, dine, inuit, baka)
Meaning and taboo: threshold
•
•
•
•
•
•
CANNIBALISM
Hunger cannibalism
Cannibalism as cultural
(mortuary cann., sacrificial etc)
INCEST
(Greek) gods
• Francisco
Goya:
• Saturn
Devouring His
Children
• (1819-23)
Meaning as the thresholod of
culture
• Clifford Geertz (US anthropologist) about
the ‘winking boy’
• ‘THICK DESCRIPTION’
• Cultural practices as texts (a Balinese
cockfight)
• (professional wrestling, a duel)
Culture and meaning
• Culture is „webs of meaning... woven by
us” (Geertz)
• Objects, texts and practices
• use + (symbolic) meanings
• CULTURALISM: coherence of a culture
• (Slavoj Zizek on lavatories)
Culture and meaning
‘Which is Adam and which
is Eve?’
‘I do not know, but I could
tell if they had their
clothes on.’
(Samuel Butler)
Saudi athlete
wearing hijab in
London 2012
• Nothing is
exhausted by its
use value
• Clothes:
‘culturalising’
the body
burqa
Male and female peacock
„the great renunciation”
Man: serious labour,
sober clothes
Woman: frivolous
decoration,
flamboyance
Rigaud: Louis XIV
Victorian boy – F. D. Roosevelt
Victorian boy
• Victorian card
Queen Victoria and baby Prince Arthur
Botticelli: Virgin Adoring the
Sleeping Child (1490)
Cimabue: The
Virgin and
Child
Enthroned with
Two Angels
Marlboro ad
Camel ads