Download Taking Culture Seriously

Interpretation of Culture
By
Clifford Geertz
Taking Culture Seriously
ICTs, Cultures and Development
Chris Westrup et al
Key Arguments
• Culture should be taken seriously.
• We should avoid using culture only as an
explanation.
• Culture is emergent, contested and an
ongoing accomplishment.
Anthropology and Culture
• Anthropolgy as a discipline shared a scientific
concern with the identification and classification
of different cultures as scientific phenomema.
• However, this approach tends to neglect history,
the sens of cultures as a whole is supported by
ignoring issues of how they might change and
cultural boundaires may shift.
Anthropology and Culture Cont.
• Recent debate among anthropologists
– Human world is culturally constructed
– Culture is a ’web of significance’ (Geertz)
• What Geertz’s view portrays is that it is
culture which matters and which acts as
the main explanation of human action.
(???)
Culture and ICTs
• Organisational culture can be managed, but are arenas
of dispute, of proactive management, and of change.
• Hofsteds’ work on national culture can be used
unreflectively and statically.
• New cultures are being created based around ICTs
which infuse new meanings, and create different
capabilities and boundaries. e.g.Lash’s ’technological
forms of life’ and Castell’s ’culture of real virtuality’.
Culture and ICTs Cont.
• Rather than seeing the relationship between
culture and technologies as a duality, both culture
and technologies can be viewed as networks of
relationships (Latour) which, through mediation,
can be linked.
• Through appropriating technologies, cultures can
be redefined and strengthened and cultural
identities changed and made more robust….
Euqually…imported ICTs will change when they are
used in any setting let alone in the South.
Cases
• China: Chinese Culture or Local Politics?
• Jordan: Redefining Jordan as an ICT
Regional Center
• Egypt: ERPs and networks that create
cultural benefits
How serious are you?
• What do you mean by Culture?
– National culture, organisational culture, culture of
technology, cultural agenda, cultural benefits
• Many big claims, weakly justified.
– Cutlure can be achieved and managed, redefined or
even strengthened.
– ICTs can interact with and provide resources for a
redefinition of culture.
– Any analysis of culture cannot be disentangled from
issues of power relations and representation practices.
Questions
•
What’s the definition of culture?
–
–
The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs,
institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a
particular period, class, community, or population: Edwardian culture;
Japanese culture; the culture of poverty.
–
–
These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a
particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression:
religious culture in the Middle Ages; musical culture; oral culture.
The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the
functioning of a group or organization.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
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Does culture include institutions?
Rathering than stopping at culture, shall we integrate culture with
discussions of institutional, political and economic settings?
How about information culture? How do we define it? Does ICT bring
a Westernised information culture to non-western societies?