The Question of Culture

Part 2 of 4. [Originally posted on November 30, 2011, in order of composition. Reposted on January 10, 2012, in reading order.]

So far, nobody seems to be able to begin to explain phenomena like the State Fair mob without reference to cultural phenomena; then not really understanding the latter, they finally can’t explain them at all. The difficulty doesn’t stop there. Since we are trying to explain criminal phenomena in terms of cultural phenomena, we are pretty much forced to make a judgment about the culture. Even though ordinary people do this all the time, it’s not considered politically correct, especially for politicians, and in certain circles it is considered definitely unscientific.

So the threshold question is: under what circumstances is it possible and proper to decide that a particular culture is defective? And even this question has to be clarified before it can be profitably answered.

First, one would have to be willing to admit that a culture could be defective. Is that true of the German culture that grew up under the Nazi ideology, politics, and foreign “policy”?

If so, it’s arguably true of that whole German culture. No-one is trying to say any such thing about the whole black culture. No, if you want to say it, say it about a black sub-culture (we owe the notion to academe, but if it helps, so be it) – perhaps even say it about a subculture that is not exclusively black, but is otherwise possible to identify, isolate, and judge defective.

The biggest problem about culture is that, as a concept, it’s flexible and expansive. It’s like the National Geographic. Anything you find in it – geology, paleontology, anthropology, archeology, urban planning, green ecology, outdoor adventure – it’s all geography. All that and more – artifacts, ephemera, subtext – is culture.

This flexibility makes culture an academic playground. Sociologists and anthropologists at least gather data, even if they can’t conduct experiments. Maybe they can be considered scientists. But cultural historians base their free-floating interpretation on a mere selection of facts made according to a mere prejudice – philosophers call it begging the question. This is the very worst manifestation of academic political correctness, and the cause of what they used to call the “culture wars.” Are they over yet? Did anybody win?

This is of little importance and possibly no interest to our columnists, but it clearly shows how vexed the problem of cultural interpretation really is.

The last point is to remember that a culture is that in which something grows, which is favorable to the growth of that thing, like a culture for bacteria. So we are looking for a culture that grows deviants, thugs, dysfunctional families, and the like.