xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
paul writes:
>Increasingly we are growing to have a more common and
>universal global culture. Wouldn't the "cultural" origins of one or
>another artefact (primary, secondary, tertiary) in this global culture
>have
>the same relevance to their use as the etymologies of words have to the
>speaking of a language?
i don't know what masochistic impulse pulls me into these spaces of
contestation with you,
maybe i've been thoroughly institutionalized and so rendered (like meat) -
but i think there is something to say here about dominant cultures,
in terms of whose cultural practices are globalized and how -
while it isn't specifically a western practice to try and manipulate the
material world into kinds of tool/activity-based
relations (calendars, astronomy, medicine, etc);
it is certainly the case that with western science and closely-woven
relations with profit-based
interests in controlling kinds of practice, that the "global culture" you
refer to is, pretty much, a disney-pepsi-coke-iz-it
kind of culture.
it is. e.g., western reproductive technology that is mobilized globally,
it is western science that promotes the practice of sterilizing women in
thirdworld countries,
authorizes the kinds of science that can have access to R&D moneys from
interested investors, and so on, for developing chemicals and plastics,
(and drugs! oh more drugs please!)
or implementing irrigation systems and other agricultural practice,
even herbal medicine is now being subjected to specific
(profit-oriented/control-based/pharmaceutical) controls...
"our" common and universal culture is pretty much an effect of particular
(whitehetmale) interests -
there is, seems to me, a shadowy practice of dominance underwriting
scientific practice, whether in mayan or western culture...
not to say every person in the world who is actively pursuing scientific
careers/activity is specifically wanting to dominate the data or phenom or
process,
but it's scripted there, the same ways mental health care is scripted with
kinds of surveillance and oppressive controls (though now not so much
through leather restraints, the care is effectively drug-care, achieving
the same effect of constraining the person's mobility)
but i'm a fool for even picking this nit eh?.
witlessly
diane
**********************************************************************
:point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
university of colorado, denver, school of education
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