Culture and Politics

A Comparative Approach

Jan-Erik Lane, Svante Ersson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754645788
• eBook ISBN: 9781317155973
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Culture and Politics provides a comprehensive introduction to the enduring phenomenon of culture and its impact on contemporary society and politics. Combining a substantial theoretical overview with intricate comparative empirical research, it assesses the complex interplay of ethnicity, religion, history and values on macro- and micro-level outcomes. Striking a judicious balance between the use of global data on the topic and their selection of six key in-depth country studies, the book draws extensively on statistical material and 'hard data' rather than the literary evidence usual in studies of this kind. This second edition of a well-established text has been expanded and fully updated in line with new events. More student-friendly, this volume now contains useful references for further reading and new material on ethnicity and religion. Readers will find that the values section is now more lucid. This clearly structured book's stringent approach to the topic and its readable, accessible style make this book one that no serious scholar or student of political culture should be without.

PART I
CULTURE AND OUTCOMES

Introduction

Our book is an inquiry into cultural identity and its political and social consequences. When people orientate in terms of a culture, then they may identify with an ethnic group, or they may search for a religious identity and adhere to a world religion or some subsection of such a civilization, or they may adopt universal values that could be present in any nation or within any religion – this is our starting point. Since the fall of communism, the search for belief systems and values has taken on a distinctly cultural tone. Which cultures, then, are relevant for people to adhere to at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when the traditional political ideologies give less and less guidance? And how important are these forms of cultural identity for political affairs?

People search for identity by means of group membership not only with political parties expressing the political ideologies from the Right to the Left, but also increasingly with communities. Communal identities result in ethnic groups, nations, religious sects or world religions when people act on the basis of joining these groups. Other types of community include, for example, new social movements as well as gays, lesbians, environmentalists and vegetarians.

The strong increase in the relevance of communities, together with migration, has created multi-cultural societies almost everywhere. As we enter the twenty-first century it seems as if communities could become just as important as associations, using Ferdinand Tönnies’ 1887 classical distinction between culture-based and interest-based groups. Different communities along ethnic and religious lines now exist in most countries, which – we hypothesize – changes the nature of politics. Communal politics is becoming legitimate in rich and poor countries, as communities are increasingly recognized as valid groups.

Culture has always had a connection with civilization. While it is claimed by some that we are heading for a clash of civilizations carried out by a few powerful nations (Huntington, 1996), many others still speak of the peaceful global marketplace with universal cultural attitudes fostered by immigration and the bringing down of borders, national as well as civilizational. Civilization is the broader cultural concept linked especially to the world religions, whereas nation is the more narrow cultural concept. Thus, a civilization could comprise several nations, which in turn could consist of various ethnic groups. In the period of globalization civilizations confront each other, but they need not remain hostile to each other.

The aim of the two chapters making up Part I is to discuss various concepts relating to cultures and outcomes. Here we have a new field in political science in which research is growing at a rapid pace. This makes it an urgent necessity to discuss, and hopefully clarify, key concepts in order to avoid confusion when the basic ideas about cultural effects are put to the necessary empirical tests.

Chapter 1
‘Culture’ and the Concepts of Culture

Introduction

The study of culture and cultural variations around the world attracted the interest of the social sciences, as well as anthropology and history, throughout the twentieth century. Only economics has not displayed a major interest in culture, due to its firm adherence to the self-interest axiom of neoclassical economics (Blaug, 1992). Self-interest or egoism is a general and universal motivation among men and women. Cultural identities, on the other hand, vary. But, what is culture, if it is everything that is not materialism or egoism? Consider the following three definitions from major scholars in this field of inquiry:

Culture is an integral composed of partly autonomous, partly co-ordinated institutions. It is integrated on a series of principles such as the community of blood through procreation; the specialisation in activities; and last but not least, the use of power in political organisation. Each culture owes its completeness and self-sufficiency to the fact that it satisfies the whole range of basic, instrumental and integrative needs. (Malinowski, 1969, p. 40)

[Culture] denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life. (Geertz, 1973, p. 89)

Political culture is thus the manifestation in aggregate form of the psychological and subjective dimensions of politics. A political culture is the product of both the collective history of a political system and the life histories of the members of that system, and thus it is rooted equally in public events and private experiences. (Pye, 1968, p. 218)

From these three authorities on culture we immediately get a first impression of the immense variety of connotations connected with the term ‘culture’. Malinowski relates culture in general to institutions, whereas Geertz links it with symbols. With Pye we have the idea of a special kind of culture – namely, political culture – which comes in addition to general cultures or the cultures of societies.

The more one reflects upon the concepts of culture, the more one realizes that it is a most debated and complex conception. The meaning (connotation) and reference (denotation) of ‘culture’ are not only essentially contested among scholars, but they also cover a number of factors, which makes it a complicated concept. Before one sets out to carry out empirical research on the occurrence of cultures, one needs to take a stand on some difficult methodological issues concerning the concept of culture. In the conception of cultural identity, there is, besides the difficult notion of culture, also the idea of identity. When cultures or cultural factors create the identity of people – their raison d’être – then how strongly is this identity creating elements with regard to their personality? The concept of identity or sameness has provoked much philosophical debate and controversy.

Thus, if culture is a problematic concept, then the same applies to the conception of cultural identity. When people today search for personal identity, do they resort to cultural identity as national or ethnic identity, religious identity or identity in the form of universal values? How cultural identities – communal or universal values – occur is a question for empirical research, which has become highly relevant as the traditional political ideologies seem to offer less and less to ordinary people in terms of an identification mechanism.

Below we approach a few key concepts or definitions in cultural theory by means of the classical semantic distinction between connotation (characteristics) and denotation (reference or the set of real objects). In particular, we aim to go beyond the many and often confusing connotations rendered in order to find the denotation – if, indeed, there is only one. Before we inquire into how cultures vary, we must pin down this elusive concept of culture, or at least become aware of its many different guises.

The Early Meanings of Culture

The history of the usage of a term is often illuminating for an analysis of its present semantics. While it is true that key social science terms change their meanings along with theoretical developments (Sartori, 1984), finding the origin of concepts does allow a certain perspective on the use of the word in question.

The word ‘culture’ is an English version of the German word Kultur, which in turn derives from the Latin word cultura, from the verb colere, meaning to cultivate. To cultivate something is to handle it or work upon it in such a way that something valuable results. Thus, ‘culture’ stands for something that has been worked upon, as in agriculture or horticulture. One can immediately see that the word ‘culture’ and its synonyms in other languages was connected very early on with the term ‘civilization’ and its synonyms, both meaning attainments by people in the form of positive results or true accomplishments.

The term ‘culture’ entered into English usage with the publication of E.B. Tylor’s text Primitive Culture in 1871. The following definition was given in this classic text:

Culture, or civilisation … is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. (Tylor, 1871, p. 1; cited in Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1963, p. 81)

If ‘culture’ denotes all the capabilities and habits of men and women, then ‘culture’ becomes almost synonymous with ‘civilization’. Also ‘civilization’ has a Latin background, originating in the word civis denoting a citizen – that is a civilized person. Thus, having a culture and being civilized was basically the same thing.

The principal German source of inspiration for studies into the culture and civilization of mankind was G.E. Klemm’s work, Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, completed in ten volumes in 1852. Some scholars attempted to distinguish between the two concepts of culture and civilization, but with little success. Examining the development of these concepts, Kroeber and Kluckhohn state:

‘Culture’ is said to be a particular state or stage of advancement in civilization. ‘Civilization’ is called an advancement or a state of social culture. In both popular and literary English the tendency has been to treat them as near synonyms, though ‘civilization’ has sometimes been restricted to ‘advanced’ or ‘high’ cultures. (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1963, p. 19)

We will, however, not accept this equality between culture and civilization. To us, culture is the most general concept, denoting the cultural identity of any community – small or large. A civilization is the culture of an extremely large community, covering many nations or peoples which may have little interaction. Thus, the Greek or Islamic civilizations cover many countries and periods in history, whereas the culture of, for example, the small community of homosexuals in present-day San Francisco is a much more limited phenomenon. Thus, all civilizations are cultures, but not all cultures are civilizations.

Let us first follow the semantic investigation by Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1963) which covers the literature up to the early 1950s. Kroeber and Kluckhohn presented a panorama over the usage of ‘Kultur’ or ‘culture’ since the word entered into scientific discourse with Klemm in Germany and Tylor in England.

The study of culture in the nineteenth century was inspired by a scientific ambition to investigate other aspects of human interaction and societies than the history of great personalities and warfare. A very important text for initiating the study of culture was Voltaire’s Essai sur les Moeurs et l’Esprit des Nations in 1769, which argued that mankind is better understood if one bypasses the history of kings and their persistent conduct of warfare.

From its usage in history in the nineteenth century, culture entered the emerging social sciences, especially sociology and anthropology. It could be said that the concept of culture became absolutely essential only in anthropology, where it was used by all the early masters of this discipline, mainly for the inquiry into non-occidental societies (Kottak, 2000). It was not until after the Second World War that the concept was applied on a large scale to the study of occidental communities.

Interestingly, the study of culture meant not only a reorientation of the focus from great personalities to the various forms of interaction between anonymous individuals, from the deeds of heroes to the collective achievements of a myriad persons. This new perspective also carried with it the idea of a distinct methodology that could be applied to the understanding of cultures – namely, the methodology of the so-called Kulturwissenschaften or Verstehen. Perhaps the most well-known work arguing for a radical separation between the methods of the natural sciences and those of the cultural sciences was H. Rickert’s Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft in 1899. Taking an extreme methodological position, Rickert argued for the sharp distinctiveness of the methodology of the cultural sciences, linking it up with the interpretative methods of the discipline of history (Rickert, 1921).

Even among scholars who, like Max Weber, made a less radical separation between the natural sciences and the cultural sciences, there was a belief in a distinct methodology for the cultural sciences (Weber, 1968). Somehow, the understanding of culture required an interpretation of meanings, or the use of what is now considered to be ‘hermeneutical’ techniques – Verstehen. This track of the debate on culture, focusing on the proper methods for understanding cultural phenomena, is highly relevant to the present-day discussion about cultural methodology or the proper approach to be employed for mapping the occurrence of values. While in no way denying the relevance of interpretative methods in cultural research (Geertz, 2001), we wish to show that the ordinary canons of empirical study are capable of providing insights into culture, and especially into how culture matters in practical life.

The results of the Kroeber and Kluckhohn inquiry may be summarized by stating a series of connotations that they were able to distil from the literature up to the early 1950s and which reoccur in the present-day debate about the new cultural approaches. The connotation of a word consists of the characteristics that make up the concept, whereas the denotation of a term is the set of real-life phenomena of which these characteristics are true. Although Kroeber and Kluckhohn did not state the denotation of the various concepts of culture that they were able to retrieve from a large literature, we will hint at the denotation in order to find out how different these concepts really are.

Connotations of Culture*

As is pointed out in semantic theory, connotations can differ widely while the denotation remains the same. Thus, different concepts may be true of the same phenomenon. There is a strong sense that many of the different definitions of culture really aim at the very same phenomenon – that is, society in general. Below we discuss several connotations and also give examples of definitions suggested under each of them.

1 Comprehensiveness: ‘total’, ‘sum total’, ‘complex whole’ Here, we find several representative definitions, but it is not always the same phenomena that they include in that total or whole. Let us mention a few: ‘all the habits acquired by man’ (Benedict, 1929), ‘the sum total of ideas, conditioned emotional responses and patterns of habitual behaviour’ (Linton, 1936), ‘that complex whole which includes artefacts, beliefs, art, all the other habits acquired by man’ (Kluckhohn and Kelly, 1945), ‘the accumulated treasury of human creation’ (Kluckhohn and Kelly, 1945). Herskovits (1948) demonstrates how enormously comprehensive the concept of culture can be when he says that culture ‘describes the total body of belief, behaviour, knowledge, sanctions, values and goals that mark the way of life of any people’.

One may wish to remind oneself of the classical phrase ‘If a concept C is defined in such a manner that it covers everything, then maybe C covers nothing’ (Wildavsky, 1973) when being confronted with these connotations.

2 Legacy: ‘tradition’, ‘social heritage’ This connotation adds time to the first connotation above concerning comprehensiveness. However, it is just as vague. Let us quote a few major authorities in the field. These include: ‘sum total and organisation of the social heritages’ (Park and Burgess, 1921); ‘Culture comprises inherited artefacts, goods, technical processes, ideas, habits and values’ (Malinowski, 1931); and culture as ‘the process by which in a given social group or social class language, beliefs, ideas, aesthetic tastes, knowledge, skills…’ are inherited (Radcliffe-Brown, 1949). But is not this connotation also too inclusive? If culture is all that societies inherit, then perhaps culture is nothing? However, there are more specific connotations available in the literature, which we can examine.

3 Norms: ‘folkways’, ‘accepted ways of thinking and acting’, ‘way of life’ Speaking of culture as norms raises the problem of what is a norm. Whether these norms also have to be obeyed or followed, and to what extent, in actual behaviour is crucial. Thus, focusing on norms could be much more specific, but it could also be equally inclusive as connotation 1. Almost all the definitions in this connotation focus on culture as a way of life – that is, as a normative order of some kind. Thus, we have:

The culture of a society is the way of life of its members, the collection of ideas and habits which they learn, share, and transmit from generation to generation. (Linton, 1945)

A culture is any given people’s way of life, as distinct from the life-ways of other peoples. (Kluckhohn and Leighton, 1946)

A culture ‘refers to a distinctive way of life of a group of people, their complete’ design for living. (Kluckhohn, 1951)

La culture, c’est la manière de vivre du groupe. (Maquet, 1949)

This expression ‘ways of life’ occurs consistently in much of the cultural literature. One may ask whether it stands for the prescribed ways of life (that is, norms or directives) or the actual ways of life (that is, regular or ‘normal’ behaviour). The counterargument is that norms which lack any correspondence to reality would sooner or later become completely obsolete. Yet, accepting this counterargument means that we are back to zero or connotations 1 or 2 which are really too inclusive. Let us try another direction.

4 Psychological characteristics: ‘learning’, ‘habit’, ‘sublimations’ One often encounters this connotation in the cultural literature. It is based on the presumption that one knows what kinds of phenomena psychological characteristics are. Yet, this is far from evident. As can be seen from the following definition that falls under connotation 4:

The sum of men’s adjustments to their life-conditions is their culture, or civilization. These adjustments … are attained only through the combined action of variation, selection, and transmission. (Sumner and Keller, 1927)

People adjust primarily through their behaviour. But are physical behaviour reactions to be labelled ‘psychological’ phenomena? Or are we are more referring to mind phenomena such as the ‘process of inventing and transmitting s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Does Culture Matter?
• PART I CULTURE AND OUTCOMES
• PART II ETHNICITY
• PART III CIVILIZATIONS
• PART IV LEGACIES
• PART V UNIVERSAL VALUES
• APPENDICES
• References
• Index