It's a soul-searching message you wrote Jay--I could see how one can be
soul-searchingly critical about one's own culture with the best of
intentions... I just would like to add that we cannot understand the issue
you raised (namely, being critical of one's culture, working towards
changing it) fully without also taking into account the socioeconomic
positions we occupy. We sometimes overestimate the degree of freedom one
has (or we have).
You talk about being a critic of your own culture. It seems that one
cannot be a critic of one's own culture without also being a critic of
one's own socioeconomic position, and the material and symbolic resources
one has access to, or occupies, or works to continue to occupy, for
oneself, for one's family, or for one's close friends or allies, or people
whose material well-being depend on you.
Without this perspective, we can easily become what I would call
"arm-chairly" self-critical. What do you think?
Angel
> From: IN%"xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu" 10-MAY-1996 11:28
> To: IN%"xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu" "X-MCA Discussion List Group"
> CC:
> Subj: culture and coercion
> I don't think Pam Schulze and I disagree much about the nature of
> culture, its pervasiveness, or the way it constrains and shapes
> all the meanings we make. I'm pretty close to being a cultural
> determinist myself (except that one needs a phenomenological
> loophole in order to explain culture dynamically, i.e. how it
> changes as we act around the edges of meaningfulness).
>
> Neither do I disagree that notions like coercion and torture, or
> pain and violence, are either in general or in what we take to be
> instances of them, culture-free. Certainly my own moral
> judgements about the nastiness of controlling other people by
> hurting them (unnecessarily, or mainly in your own interest) are
> very much spoken from within my own cultures.
>
> But I was trying to advance a notion that cultures differ in the
> degree to which people within them take an interest in
> controlling fewer or more of the repertory of behaviors of other
> people recognized in those cultures, and that they differ in the
> degree to which pain is inflicted as a means of doing this. My
> _interest_ in pointing this out comes from a meaning-focus in my
> own cultures. _Foregrounding_ it as a dimension of difference
> becomes possible with the concepts of my cultures. But as I have
> no choice but to see others from where I can stand, and as my
> interest is in better understanding and judging my own community
> by the comparisons I can make to other communities, it seems
> reasonable to me to advance the view that across cultures (as
> seen from here and with these interests), there are some
> communities where such nasty matters are relatively minimal, both
> as I see them, and as best I can tell as members of these other
> communities see them (though they may not care about such things
> as I do), and that there are others that seem to go well beyond
> this minimum.
>
> Is this minimum a 'universal'? no, for neither its formulation,
> nor any measure of it could be, and the actual level of control-
> by-pain-for-gain which is 'necessary' for a given community would
> be specific to its circumstances. I suppose one could say that a
> culture-and-community simply has the level it has, and that if it
> had a different level it would be a different community, its
> cultural norms different. But if my agenda is to understand how
> my own community could get by with less of this nasty business,
> then I am in fact concerned with its covariation with other
> aspects of culture, which I can only apprehend cross-culturally
> (and/or historically). How different, and in what ways different,
> would my cultures have to be if they were to support and sustain
> substantially less of this sort of coercive control?
>
> I think it also matters whether control is felt-to-be-coercive or
> not. Of course we are 'constrained' by culture in innumerable
> ways most of which we are unaware of. Such constraints are not
> _painful_ to people, while coercions (by my definition) are. No
> doubt there are many specific invisible and unfelt (but
> effective) cultural constraints which are complicit with people's
> willingness or eagerness to control others in specific respects
> by painful means, etc. I would like to understand better what
> those are.
>
> But I cannot be a cultural relativist about my own cultures. I
> cannot simply say that they are as they are and people in them
> behave as they do because they are constrained by this culture. I
> have a responsibility to also be a critic of my culture, to judge
> it according to values available within it, to condemn aspects of
> it, and seek with others to change it. I would never do that with
> a culture I was not a member of, because I am quite sure I would
> misconstrue too much, would intrude where I could too easily
> avoid the negative consequences of my intervention, etc. But for
> my own, for just such reasons in reverse, I must. I condemn the
> 'scientific' perspectives of my own cultures for their abdication
> of 'domestic' moral responsbility, as much as I do for their
> imperializing universalism toward Others. I want cultural-
> historical perspectives that provide grounds for moral critique
> of my own cultures' evil. And I want this very much _within_ the
> moral framework of my own cultures, and in hopes that some parts
> of these cultures will change for what many of us (also changed)
> will take to be the better. JAY.
>
> --------------
>
>
> JAY LEMKE.
> City University of New York.
> BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
> INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
>
>