Exploring Borders

Understanding Culture and Psychology

Giuseppe Mantovani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415231008
• eBook ISBN: 9781134567874
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

In Exploring Borders Giuseppe Mantovani highlights and explores the ways in which culture acts as a framework organising our experience. He emphasises the differences across and between cultures and examines the depths to which these can go. He also analyses the functions of culture, including: mediation, meaning-making, and forming a repertory of values and principles. Finally, he considers some of the challenges raised by taking a cultural perspective and examines how these may be addressed in society.
This highly original and eminently readable narrative will be invaluable to scholars of psychology, media and cultural studies, and to all those fascinated by culture and eager to to make the cultural dimension visible to all.

Part I

Frames of experience

In Boston, a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church was driving along a lonesome road on the outskirts of the city. Seeing a small Negro boy trudging along, the dignitary told his chauffeur to stop and give the boy a lift. Seated together in the back of the limousine, the cleric, to make conversation, asked, ‘Little boy, are you a Catholic?’ Wide-eyed with alarm, the boy replied, ‘No sir, it’s bad enough being colored without being one of those things’

(Allport, 1954:4)

Who would have thought of finding such a neat little story at the beginning of Allport’s celebrated volume on prejudice? It shows us that prejudice spreads its tentacles in all directions. Racial prejudice, deep-rooted in the history of the United States, mingles here with religious prejudice, deeprooted in the Puritan origins of the noble city of Boston. The black boy feared he would notch up yet another black mark against himself—that of being a Catholic.

The story is set in Boston and anyone who knows the story of that city can easily understand it. Even the boy’s terror of finding himself trapped in the incomprehensible quarrels of whites who travel around by limousine is comprehensible. This same story could hardly have been set in Paris. Not because everyone in Paris loves Catholics, but because the stereotypes we expect to find in Gay Paree are different from those supposedly thriving in Boston. But why are people’s attitudes so different? How can a cultural environment influence the attitudes of its members to such an extent? We shall see in the following pages.

Chapter 1, Birds and spirits, shows how people’s experience is structured by a system of categories which has its roots in culture: the Dyirbal aborigines of Australia do not put birds in the same category as animals because, according to their traditional beliefs, birds are the spirits of dead women. Every society supplies its members with a set of beliefs which direct both the judgements and the prejudices of those same members. If we cannot draw a precise line between judgement and prejudice, how can we recognize the latter?

Chapter 2, The roots of prejudice, suggests that prejudice consists in denying the cultural identity of other people we meet, as Columbus did during his first voyage of discovery to the Americas in the ritual of “taking possession” of the new lands on behalf of the crown of Spain. Contempt for others and justification for destroying them along with their culture stem from recognizing only one legitimate, rightful, rational way of viewing reality—our own.

Chapter 3, Metaphors and analogies, discusses how culture influences our decisions by means of the metaphors we use to frame controversial problems. Problem-solving depends on the way in which problems are posed inside a given culture: every judgement contains elements of prejudice. If we become aware of the intrinsic limitations of our act of judgement, we can accept that our way of seeing things is not necessarily either the only or the best way and that other people are entitled to develop their own ways of organizing their experience.

Chapter 1

Birds and spirits

THE POWER OF CATEGORIES

The Bible tells us that God created all sorts of animals, the birds of the heavens and the wild beasts of the earth, and that he brought them before Adam to find out what he wished to call them. God seems to have been curious to know the names Adam would give animals. His curiosity was justified, because it is precisely through the assignation of names and their groupings into categories that human beings try to order their physical, mental and social world.

Let us imagine that, during that earliest meeting, the animals heard themselves called by name for the first time: dog, cat, horse, wolf, fox, lynx, and so on. And then Adam said: “The first three animals are ‘good’, I consider them as friends and will treat them as such; but the last three are ‘bad’ for me and I will chase and even kill them whenever I get the chance.” Some of the rejected animals would have felt bad about this, they would perhaps have called in the prehistoric equivalent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but they would at least have been warned about Adam’s intentions towards them.

I too would like to know how the present I gave Anna for her birthday was classified. I gave her a copy of one of my favourite books, Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, but I still don’t know whether she liked it, or whether she was offended, considering it to be an allusion to our recurrent arguments about her supposed addiction to TV shows. On which physical and mental shelf has she put my gift? Under what label has she catalogued it? Is there a section for “Nice Books” or “Books To Be Read Immediately”? Because that is where I would like to see it. Even better would be to find it in a special section called “Books Donated By Fascinating People”. In actual fact, I am a little nettled by the idea that Anna knows a whole crowd of silly people she classifies as “fascinating”. We are just good friends, I know, but I would like to be the only person (or almost) on her list.

By classifying my book as “interesting” or “boring”, Anna introduces some order into her world. She decides whether to read it at once, or sometime soon, or simply to forget it or throw it away. By assigning my beloved The Catcher in the Rye to a certain category, she organizes her physical environment (will it fit into her new backpack or will it be put up high on a distant shelf?), her mental life (she is bound to read it in the evenings instead of compulsively watching TV), her relationship with me (tomorrow she will tell me she liked it more than Homefront) and also her self-image (she will say: “I am not stupid, I loved reading your book”).

There are of course various types of names. The most specific are individual, like Christian names: “Alice” is that wretched younger sister of mine, always whining round me like a mosquito. “Mark” is that horribly muscular young man Anna has sworn never to see again. “Anna” of course is my best friend (you will probably have realized that already). Apart from proper names, there are other terms—like book, shelf, jasmine, dream—which have a wider field of application. And then there are even more general terms, categories, which we use to highlight similarities and differences in those aspects of reality that are relevant to us.

It is important to note that categories organize not only linguistic productions and mental activities but also social reality. For example, words used on the island of Bali to indicate eating—miunan, maraynam, ngayengang, madaar, ngamah, ngaloklok, neda and nyaseksek—reveal and maintain a strict social hierarchy. The first two words are used for the highest members of the priesthood and nobility. Ngayengang is used for the remaining high castes. Madaar is used for foreigners, when the status of a person is unclear, or for courtesy, as well as for sick people. Ngamah is used for the lowest castes, but serves also for animals in general. There is also a separate hierarchy for animals, reflected in words designating their ways of eating: ngaloklok is used for animals which swallow their food, like dogs and pigs; neda is reserved for dogs belonging to people of high caste, while nyaseksek refers specifically to chickens (Hobart, 1987).

This Balinese categorization combines the human world with the animal one: it tells us that low-caste humans eat like animals, but it also assures us that dogs belonging to high-caste persons have better table manners than ordinary ones. The classification of animals and plants which we in the West studied at school, with Latin names for genera, species and families, is the result of the work of seventeenth-century naturalists, of whom the most renowned was Linnaeus, a Swedish scientist, famous in his own time also for his obstinacy in insisting on placing human beings among the quadrupeds. This opinion caused him to enter into bitter controversy with his colleagues who, strangely enough, were not very pleased at being lumped together with deer, donkeys and pigs—a further example of the social relevance of categorization.

A BIZARRE CATALOGUE

If Anna’s mind contained a special section for me, I would feel on top of the world. In fact, I would feel like the Emperor mentioned in the catalogue of animals which Borges (1960) says he found in an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia, “The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge”, which lists animals in a really curious way:

(a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (1) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

(Borges, 1960:108)

The Chinese catalogue seems to challenge both logic and common sense—although it is so witty and imaginative that we suspect that Borges himself invented it—because the various categories it contains are mixed, instead of staying clearly separate as they should be. For example, although mermaids fall into category (e), they are also fabulous animals (f), although I personally would hesitate to include among the animals those charming girls I came to know so well last August in a disco down on the Adriatic coast. Mermaids may also belong to the Emperor (a), and be trained (c) like dolphins in an aquarium (the thought makes me shudder), or even embalmed (b) (even more horrible thought). At the idea of being embalmed, the poor mermaids would have good reason to tremble as if they were mad (i) and could be depicted with gooseflesh with the court painter’s very fine camel’s hair brush (k).

How confusing! Only one case, that of poor mermaids trained and trembling, has destroyed the entire ordering of the animals of the benevolent encyclopaedia. Why make a subdivision which does not really subdivide anything? In actual fact, the mermaids are not the only ones to blame for this. We can think of innumerable other cases of the same kind—that of a suckling pig belonging to the Emperor which has just broken a priceless vase and is trembling for its life, and so on—which would shake the foundations of the delicate architecture of the “Celestial Emporium”. And speaking of trembling, it comes to my mind that Anna too trembles like a leaf when she watches a horror film—or does she just pretend, to make me sit closer and put my arm round her for comfort? I really don’t know what category to put her in.

Borges’s list serves our purpose: it reveals the seemingly arbitrary character of many of our forms of organizing knowledge. It shows us that assigning a certain element to a certain category depends heavily on context and on the interpretation we give of the situation in which the element is embedded. I can put Anna in the category of trembling animals only if I believe she really does tremble when watching horror films—otherwise she would have to go in the class of scheming actresses. As for animals “that resemble flies from a distance”, they too depend on the interpretation a person gives of what he or she sees. Anna (I’m becoming a little obsessed by the girl, I must admit) does look like a fly if you see her from a long way away zipping down a ski slope; I am afraid that if she knew I am comparing her with a fly, she would not take it at all well. I had better say she executes precise turns on the snow in her smart black ski-suit, moving as elegantly as a dragonfly.

In its strange choices of categories, the Chinese catalogue suggests that our way of ordering the real world is only one of many possible ways—not the only one or even the best one. We do not perceive reality “as it is” but, according to an important branch of social psychology (Gergen, 1994), we construct it by means of our discursive practices. I prefer to use a different metaphor referring to exploration rather than construction of reality—because it may seem a little audacious to say that we create things when in actual fact we usually limit ourselves to the task of ordering them according to our contingent needs. Each of us knows only too well that there are many other things in reality beyond what we manage to catch in our nets.

The metaphor of exploration leaves open the casket of surprises which reality reserves for each of us: in our voyages of discovery, we can always find something more, something different, from our previous expectations. We explore reality by relying on the maps that our culture has given us. We are aware that we need them to venture into wild, unknown lands or cross uncharted seas, but we know also that, accurate though our maps may be, they do not exhaust the multi-faceted possibilities of the real environment we are exploring (Mantovani, 1996a). They only tell us a few things, and approximately at that. Some aspect of reality always escapes us, engrossed as we are in our system of categories and expectations.

People use their more or less incomplete maps to orient themselves with respect to their objectives, which means that the same territory may be mapped in various ways depending on the actor’s current interests: Frank’s map of the Yukon shows goldfields, because Frank is a gold-digger; Kitty’s map shows the carriage routes because she is a dancer in saloons frequented by gold-diggers; and, on his own map, Bill has marked all the waterways where beavers live, because Bill is a hunter of furs.

How do we construct the maps we use to explore the territories of reality? A plausible, commonsense answer is that experience teaches each of us the most suitable categories for ordering our particular world. The subdivision of classes in the apocryphal Chinese catalogue, for example, may appear extravagant to those who, like ourselves, are not the subjects of a despotic Chinese emperor. If we were, the first item on the list would be not at all weird for us; on the contrary, it would be of the utmost importance to us because it would convey a valuable warning: “If you want to avoid trouble, stay away from animals which belong to the Emperor”. The experience of disobeying this rule and being duly punished would confirm the wisdom of the “Benevolent Catalogue”, which would then no longer appear funny but a useful practical guide for foreigners wishing to pay a visit to the Forbidden City.

TRADITIONAL GRIDS

However, experience is never found in a state of natural innocence, pure and untarnished by previous expectations and traditional beliefs. It develops inside a cultural framework which makes it possible and at the same time constrains it. Experience does teach us how we can proceed in our exploration of the world around us, but it is tradition which states, at the beginning of our journey, what we must experience and how. This is a closed circle: each of us must judge, according to how we appreciate the ineluctable sheet-anchor which holds experience fast to tradition, whether it is a virtuous circle or a vicious one.

If we were to prepare our personal catalogues of animals, we would see the ordering of our own interests reflected in them. A member of the World Wildlife Fund would highlight rare at-risk species; a science teacher would use Linnaeus’s taxonomy to give his pupils a systematic vision of the whole; a fearful child would want to know first of all which animals were dangerous and which not. Apart from differences due to peculiar individual interests, all these catalogues would turn out to be relatively similar if they were prepared by people sharing school curricula, religious beliefs, language, country, profession, social status and preferred hobbies. They would be far from similar if we asked people from different countries and cultures to prepare them: as regards food, for example, millions of people throughout the world never touch pork in any shape or form, whereas others have pork barbecues and gnaw spare ribs with gusto; some appreciate as a delicacy a certain grub found in the bark of trees and eaten raw, others shudder at the very idea.

The role of culture in producing categories is highlighted by Lakoff (1987) starting from Dixon’s (1982) work on the classification of things according to the Dyirbal, an Australian aboriginal tribe in whose langauge each name must be preceded by one of the following four classificators: bayi, balan, balam or bala. If you want to speak Dyirbal corrrectly, you must know exactly which of the four classificators precedes a certain name. The Dyirbal, obviously, have ideas very different from ours about how things are reciprocally connected. We can use their listings in order to understand how categories are produced: sometimes we can have a better view of things which are close to us if we stand back a little to gain a new and better vantage point.

The Dyirbal universe, Lakoff says following Dixon’s studies, is divided into four broad categories:

1. the first category, requiring the use of bayi, includes “men, kangaroos, possums, bats, most fishes, some birds, most insects, the moon, storms, rainbows, boomerangs, some spears, etc.”;

2. the second category, using the classificator balan, includes: “women, bandicoots, dogs, platypuses, echidnas, some snakes, some fishes, most birds, fireflies, scorpions, crickets, the hairy mary grub, anything connected with water or fire, sun and stars, shields, some spears, some trees, etc.”;

3. the third category, requiring balam, includes “all edible fruit and the plants that bear them, tubers, ferns, honey, cigarettes, wine, cake, etc.”;

4. the last category, bala, applies to “parts of the body, meat, bees, wind, yamsticks, some spears, most trees, grass, mud, stones, noises and language, etc.” (Lakoff, 1987:93).

We seem to have returned to Borges’s list in the “Celestial Emporium”. For example, the presence of “some spears” in as many as three out of four categories recalls the difficulty of confining our mermaids to a single category. We may wonder at the criteria according to which such very dissimilar beings and objects as women, fireflies, scorpions, sun and stars are put in the same class. A malicious reader might insinuate that certain similarities can be found between women and echidnas, but the poor aboriginal Dyirbal certainly cannot be blamed for such a perverse, badly prejudiced and politically incorrect association.

The Dyirbal categorization does in fact follow a precise logic: the first class basically contains men and animals; the second women, water, fire, and war; the third food which is not meat; and the fourth everything else not found in the other three. The very existence of this residual class, corresponding to “all the others” of Borges’s list, is useful because it clears the field of acces...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Frames of experience
• Part II: Immeasurable distances
• Part III: The web of culture
• Part IV: Culture in education
• Conclusions
• Notes
• References
• Index