The Culture Meeting ended with a discussion on the ideas provided by the seven speakers. Participants discussed synergies and contradictions in the way the presentations addressed notions of culture and identity. These are offered as concluding remarks of this report.
· What is culture?
Participants agreed with the notion that culture is a process and not simply a material entity. As such, it is subjected to interpretation, negotiation, and reconfiguration. Culture is highly repetitive, and leads to patterning. Such shared patterning by social actors is what in fact constitutes social structure.
The culture as schemas view further argues that people have access to a range of schemas, which may be more or less articulated, more or less elaborated, more or less compelling, and more or less applicable in a given situation. The ways in which participants discussed culture subjected the concept to different levels of abstraction.
· Where is culture?
There were two views on this question: culture exists in people’s minds, versus culture is found in publicly-accessible signs. These are seemingly contradictory statements, yet it is crucial to think of culture as being in both places; such view explains why culture affects individual behavior and why individual agency can “move” cultural norms and shared practices. The publicly-accessible signs can be considered discourse which reflects what goes on in people’s mind. The most important signs are narratives, which are captured in interviews.
Culture can also be represented in Blau space. The fact that meanings and models are socially embedded means that they are socially structured—that is, unequally distributed within a population, within “Blau space,” and even within a cultural group. People may have more or less knowledge of and access to particular schemata.
· What is its purpose?
There was general agreement on viewing culture as providing means (to understand new situations). People do not tend to interpret the world de novo, but use schemas, mental maps, or short cuts to understanding situations, treating “this” as an example of a broad category of similar “thises”. In any given situation, there are not only the abstract schemas and the concrete action, but also an intermediary process of matching—deciding which maps or schemas are relevant and how they apply.
Culture defines models for action. By providing meanings and maps for interpreting specific contexts, culture also provides preferences associated with different identities. These preferences motivate specific behaviors. Insofar as culture provides motivations, rather than resources, it probably does so through offering particular kinds of imagined future selves.
· How is culture transmitted? How does it change?
Social interaction and social networks are essential to the transmission of culture. Contact with other people provides individuals with the different schemas that they can draw on to give meaning to particular situations.
Context is a crucial determinant in cultural change. Cultural categories are not fixed, and since context is always changing, culture must too. Culture’s inertial characteristic means that it does not change unless it has to. When a particular situation arises where deflection occurs from people’s reference state, there is some sort of response to try and bring meaning back. Some circumstances may require that cultural meanings themselves change to return to a new reference state.
People rely on a cultural schema until it is no longer useful for giving meaning to situations (often because of entropy); they then make use of another one. More or less subconsciously, individuals “choose” how to make sense of specific contexts.
· What methodological implications arise from this?
To understand why individuals organize into family units and what accounts for how families are organized, it is imperative to think about the cultural processes at work, and how they relate to people’s identity.
To understand “culture”, meaning and interpretation are fundamental, whether this is expressed in words or in numbers. Culture might explain something or give meaning to it; either way it is possible to gather adequate data.
Meaning is non-transparent: what individuals respond in an interview situation is contextual. Interviewers must be attentive to how wording of questions invokes more or less of some aspects of an individual’s identity.
Appendix I: Meeting Agenda
Culture, Structure, Identity and Family Change
June 13-14, 2005
6100 Executive Boulevard, Rockville, Maryland
5th Floor Conference Room
Agenda
Monday, June 13
10:00 am Introductions and Logistics Chris Bachrach/S. Philip Morgan
10:15 How research in the area of language and linguistics can inform theories and approaches to studying other forms of culture
Speaker: Greg Urban, University of Pennsylvania, Anthropology
Moderator: Jenna Johnson Hanks
12:00 pm Lunch brought in
12:30 pm “Cultural models” approaches in anthropology that draw on cognitive
science, and other anthropological approaches to understanding and
measuring culture
Speaker: Linda Garro, University of California, Los Angeles
Moderator: S. Philip Morgan
2:15 pm Break
2:15 pm Research in social psychology and anthropology that provides insights
into how culture “happens” in social groups, e.g., through group
identification, social influence, and social learning
2:15-3:30 Speaker: Lynn Smith-Lovin, Sociology, Duke University
Moderator: Hans Peter Kohler
3:45-5:00 Speaker: Kathy Ewing, Anthropology, Duke University
Moderator: Chris Bachrach
5:00 pm Announcements and logistics
5:15 pm Adjourn for the day
Dinner 6:30 pm: All participants invited
Sweet Basil, 4910 Fairmont Ave, Bethesda
301-657-7997
Tuesday, June 14
8:30 am Continental breakfast available in meeting room
9:00 am Announcements and logistics
9:15 Research in sociology that addresses the diffusion of behaviors and ideas
over social space, through the interactions of social networks and the
influence of media and other institutions
9:15-10:30 Speaker: Miller McPherson, U. of Arizona and Duke University
Moderator: Jenna Johnson Hanks
10:45-12:00 Speaker: Hans-Peter Kohler, University of Pennsylvania
Moderator: S. Philip Morgan
12:00 pm Lunch brought in
12:30 Research in economics that integrates group identification, and the
preferences associated with group identification, into economic “utility
functions” that help to predict behavioral choices
Rachel Kranton, Economics, U Maryland
Moderator: Chris Bachrach
1:45 Break
2:00 Open discussion Moderators: Chris Bachrach, Hans Peter Kohler, Jenna Johnson Hanks, S. Philip Morgan
This meeting is jointly sponsored by the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch (DBSB) of NICHD, the Explaining Family Change Project, and Duke University.
Contact Persons:
Chris Bachrach, NICHD, cbachrach@nih.gov
S. Philip Morgan, Duke University, pmorgan@soc.duke.edu