Mike McGuireMV Community College

COM 101

Where’s the Culture?

stepping in and stepping out

Form a group and do the following…Form a group and do the following…

Define culture.

Define subculture.

Name a subculture you belong to.For that subculture give an example of its distinguishing characteristics such as…

� shared rules� ritual behaviors� locations where the behaviors usually occur� insider phrases

What Is Culture?What Is Culture?

Culture is local and manmade and hugely variable. It tends also to be integrated. A culture, like an individual, is more or less consistent pattern of thought and action.

– RUTH BENEDICT

What Is Culture?What Is Culture?

A society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members…[I]t does not consist of things, people, behavior, or emotions. It is rather an organization of those things.

– WARD GOODENOUGH

What Is Culture?What Is Culture?

Cultures are, after all, collective untidy assemblages, authenticated by belief and agreement.

– BARBARA MYERHOFF

What Is Culture?What Is Culture?

Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance which he himself has created. I take culture to be those webs.

– CLIFFORD GEERTZ

What Is Culture?What Is Culture?

An invisible web of behaviors, patterns, rules, and rituals of a group of people who have contact with one another and share common languages.

– SUNSTEIN & CHISERI-STRATER

What Is Fieldworking and What Is Fieldworking and Ethnography?Ethnography?

Fieldworking—the process of talking, listening, recording, observing, participating, and sometimes even living in a particular place to do research

Ethnography—the written product of your fieldwork: a researched study that synthesizes information about the life of a people or group in order to understand the cultures present there; as ethnographers study the cultures of others, they learn patterns that connect with their own lives and traditions.

In doing any research, be sure to know the difference between collecting information and synthesizing it.

Don’t justDon’t just

Beware of Colonization (and Beware of Colonization (and ethnocentrism)ethnocentrism)

Colonization is a way of thinking

It is the judging of people or cultures different from your own as less sophisticated

Colonization is the domination of one culture by the values of another

It is the projecting of the fieldworkers’ own assumptions onto the groups they study

In Rwanda during the late 19th century, Racist ideas that Belgians as well as Germans had brought with them made them think that the Tutsi were a superior group. Tutsis were more white looking than other Rwandans.

Unpack Your Cultural BaggageUnpack Your Cultural Baggage

Don’t project your own assumptions or judgments onto the groups you study

Embark on a collaborative journey with those you study

Insider and Outsider PerspectivesInsider and Outsider Perspectives

Studying culture requires both objectivity and subjectivity—both an outsider and insider perspective

This requires stepping in and stepping out throughout your research

Objectivity allows us to see things without the burden of our cultural baggage, but subjectivity allows us to uncover features of culture that are not always apparent

A breakfast example of stepping A breakfast example of stepping out…out…

A headhunting example of stepping A headhunting example of stepping in…in…

Asking questions like a fieldworker…Asking questions like a fieldworker…

As a fieldworker, your purpose is to collect and consider multiple sources of information, not facts alone, to convey the perspective of the people in the culture you are studying

The fieldworker asks big questions such as “What’s going on here?” and “Where’s the culture?” as he or she observes, listens, records, interprets, and analyzes

Become a participant observer

Your HomeworkYour Homework

make the ordinary extraordinary in your online journal entry (due Tuesday)

complete your topic proposal (due Thursday)