Class 3/28

1. What is culture? How do you know it when you see it? How do you understand and participate in it? can you think of times when you didn't understand a cultural event, custom, etc?

About culture, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said: "We ... say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however important as regards this observation, that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and. what is more, even
given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them."

According to the later philosopher Clifford Geertz: Finding our feet, an unnerving business which never more than distantly succeeds, is what ethnographic research consists of as a personal experience; trying to formulate the basis on which one imagines, always excessively, one has found them is what anthropological writing
consists of as a scientific endeavor. We are not, or at least I am not, seeking either to become natives (a compromised word in any case) or tomimic them. Only romantics or spies would seem to find point in that. We are seeking, in the widened sense of the term in which it encompasses very much more than talk, to converse with them, a matter a great deal more difflcult, and not only with strangers, than is commonly recognized.

This is because culture, according to Geertz is SYMBOLIC ACTION, and it takes a participat/observer to be able to decode the symbols involved inside any human action or interaction.


HW:
For Wed: Read and be ready to discuss the three short articles starting with the three short articles on The Pick-Up Line, Uses of the Words "White" and "Black," and the Fashion of High-Heal Shoes. Each of these is a sort of Thick Description.

For Fri.:

1) Read and be ready to discuss Rebekah Nathan's "Life in the Dorms." This is also an example of a researcher trying to decode the symbols of a particular culture: that of freshmen living in dorms.

2) Bring in your own thick description of some small cultural interaction that you have insight into. (Fashion, greetings, rituals you partake in, games you play are all good places to start...) (This is mandatory, and will count as a Friday paper grade)

This thick description must include: 1) at least 1 photo. 2) 1-1.5 pages of writing in the style of the authors we've been reading this week. 3) at least two (total) direct quotations from any two of the reading as it applies to your inquiry...i.e. When Rebekah Nathan writes, "Bulletin boards provided the official imagery of dorm life," she is starting to point out a distinction between "official" and "unofficial" dorm culture. My research focuses on another form of "unofficial" dorm culture, the Week-Night Hang-Out.

In writing your thick description, consider questions like: what are the rules of this interaction? what are it's purposes? how does one come to know these things? what are variations on this theme? what cultural forces influence this sort of interaction (think tv, advertising, politics, etc)...

remember, your function is to Decode a cultural interaction for an audience of others who are interested in thinking about small variations in culture.