Questions, Intuitions, Revisions:
Telling and Re-Telling Stories About Ourselves in the World
A College Seminar Course at Bryn Mawr College

Forum 9- Cultures and Cultural Disabilities

Name:  Anne Dalke
Username:  adalke@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  telling culture's story
Date:  2003-11-11 10:12:46
Message Id:  7196
Comments:

Your writing assignment next week will be to tell the story of some aspect of a culture with which you are familiar. Step back from it, "make it strange" and then tell the story--whatever it might look like. Post here a short account of what the longer paper will be talking about....
Looking forward to hearing your tales--
Anne and Paul

Name:  Alicia Jones
Username:  ajones@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  Culture Project
Date:  2003-11-12 10:24:37
Message Id:  7224
Comments:
Hi all,

I will be writing about the fascinating culture of an African American theater company. I had the privilege of being the business manager for the Oakland Ensemble Theatre in California and it was the best job I've ever had. Theater is indeed a culture of its own. I always felt like I living in a dual-sided world when I was there - there was the business side and then there was the creative side. Words on a page were transformed into multi-dimensional and magical live performances.

Alicia

Name:  Kristin Black
Username:  kblack@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  The world that I know
Date:  2003-11-12 16:17:32
Message Id:  7239
Comments:
I'm not exactly sure which culture I will be writing about, but here are a few ideas I'm tossing around in my head:
1)Midwestern Hunting/Gun culture
2)Children's Beauty Pageants
3)Children of Armed Forces Personnel

Interestingly,I am a current or former member of all three of these cultures.I think it's significant for a person to be a part of a culture in order to describe it.An outsider's view can only hold so much weight,I think.

Name:  Tamiyo Britton
Username:  tbritton@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  Topic of my writing
Date:  2003-11-12 16:17:33
Message Id:  7240
Comments:
I will be wriing about the community life in North Philadelphia where I lived and worked as a volunteer. It is a self-help program and mostly African American people who are trying to recover from substance abuse.
Name:  Ginny Costello
Username:  vcostell
Subject:  Culture
Date:  2003-11-12 20:52:08
Message Id:  7241
Comments:
I intend to write about the work culture in the American business community.
Name:  Bethany Keffala
Username:  bkeffala@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  prehistoric toads in my coal
Date:  2003-11-13 00:35:40
Message Id:  7243
Comments:
Ok, so my favorite part of the first reading was:
"'Don't go away, don't isolate yourself, but come here, because we all have had these kinds of experiences.' And so there is this constant pulling together to resist the tendency to run or hide or separate oneself during a traumatic emotional experience. This separation not only endangers the group but the individual as well- one does not recover by oneself." I found that to be really inspiring, and it just left me very hopeful and very peaceful. This also reminds me a little bit of Whorf and his postulations about Hopi, and about language in general. He had some weird ideas. I don't like his ideas. Anyway. Why do we only really think of story-telling as a childhood thing? I don't think it should be, especially after reading this article. But I suppose we do have forms of story-telling in books and poetry and theatre and movies and the media, and even gossip. I like that the way in which she writes reflects what she's saying.
I liked certain parts of the second reading, but it was too long, too drawn out. I liked the writing style, though. That made it a little more interesting. It would be a pain to visit Bali. The ignoring sounds a bit like an initiation. There are certain parts of their culture that really bother me. I don't think I could be Balinese. But the parallels drawn between the man and the animal are very interesting indeed.
Name:  Christine Lipuma
Username:  clipuma@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  Cultures
Date:  2003-11-13 01:07:26
Message Id:  7244
Comments:
I will probably be writing about the culture of my high school choir and comparing it to chorale at Bryn Mawr. These two groups have the same topic and focus but are belong to totally different worlds, and I would like to explore why this is.
Name:  olivia
Username:  ospradli@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  article
Date:  2003-11-13 10:21:35
Message Id:  7246
Comments:
I thought the following, which appeared in last tuesdays NY Times, was pertinent to our class discussions. The first one is on robots and consciousness and teh second is on sleep.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/science/11MACH.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/science/11SLEE.html

Name:  Paul Grobstein
Username:  pgrobste@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  tuesday science times
Date:  2003-11-13 11:50:20
Message Id:  7247
Comments:
Very much agree with Olivia that this weeks NY Times Science Times is relevant to our discussions, both past and future ... and both in detail and in general.

I was myself struck by an article in that issue called Does Science Matter?, and wrote a response that I'm copying below. Seems to me this bears on some current and upcoming questions:

*********
Does Science Matter? Refocusing the Question ...

It is appropriate, desirable, and indeed necessary to periodically examine the role that various institutions play in the broader human cultures of which they are a part ... and science in no exception. From this perspective, Science Times of 11 November 2003, and the lead article "Does Science Matter?" by William J. Broad and James Glanz, is very much to be welcomed.

At the same time, it is important to discriminate betweent those aspects of an institution that make it valuably unique in a culture and those that simply reflect the cultural commonalities that exert similar pressures on all cultural institutions. Science is far from the only institution asked by the culture "to resolve social ills". We ask that similarly of other quite different institutions - social, political, economic, and religious - and it is not clear to me that the performance of science in this particular regard is dramatically any worse (or better) than any other institution in our culture. In this regard, I worry that Broad and Glanz (and the Science Times issue as a whole) might mislead readers by posing a set of benchmarks that might appropriately be used for evaluating our culture as a whole but are not appropriate for answering the specific question "Does Science Matter"?

The distinctive role that science has played in our culture, and can if it is valued continue to play, is not to resolve social (or individual) ills but rather to be the embodiment of permanent skepticism, of a persistant doubt about the validity of any given set of understandings reached by whatever means (including those of science itself). It is the insistence on doubting existing understandings, not the wish to eliminate humans ills nor to find "answers", that has always animated science and has always been the source of its power and successes.

Is that persistant skepticism, the perpetual unsettling of existing understandings, good for the culture of which science is a part? For humanity? That remains, of course, to be seen. The by-products of science have certainly contributed to alleviating some social ills but have equally exacerbated or brought into being others. At the same time, a strong argument can be made that, on balance, human cultures (like life itself) depends fundamentally on conceiving challenges, and potential solutions, before they come into being. Doing so is what science is, distinctively, all about.

From this perspective, the fact that "two-thirds of the population believe that alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution should be taught in public schools" is not an indication that science doesn't "matter" but rather an indication that it does. On a widespread basis, people are being provided with the products of skepticism, with alternative stories that haven't occured to them before and that are potentially relevant to future challenges. And I would argue that this is today occurring with unusual power in an array of areas of unprecedented scope, ranging from cosmological issues to issues of the nature of human life, consciousness, and personal responsbility, to explorations of the place and meaning of humanity in the universe.

The key question, from my perspective, is not "Does Science Matter?" in terms of the standards we apply to all institutions in our culture but rather does science matter in terms of the distinctive role that it has to play in our culture? The answer, it seems to me, is demonstrably yes, and it is becoming even more yes as the decades and centuries go on. The remaining question, one that follows importantly from this, is whether our culture wants science to matter in the distinctive way it can and does. Here, I think, there is greater question, as evidenced by the recent shift in funding patterns from mostly public to mostly private and commercial support of research. I fear this reflects a misguided view of why science matters, one to which the Science Times issue could, however unintentionally, contribute. I hope not, because I suspect strongly that the future of humanity depends on our enthusiam for supporting the kinds of anticipations of change that will not occur without an institution committed to permanent skepticism.
***************

I'd of course be interested in anyone/everyone else's reactions/perspectives.

Name:  Anne Dalke
Username:  adalke@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  the doubting game
Date:  2003-11-13 14:37:17
Message Id:  7250
Comments:

The most interesting thing that (for me) came out of our discussion, this morning, of the essays by Silko and Geertz was that her storytelling happened WITHIN a culture: if you weren't a member/didn't share in that culture/didn't already know its stories, you couldn't understand the tales that were being told (for instance: we really couldn't make sense of the one about yashtoah). But the storytelling of anthropologists is intended (as Geertz has said elsewhere), to "make available to us answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man [sic] has said."

But the project of this course is not just telling, but REVISING stories. So: having extended the "consultable record" ...

what do we DO w/ it? If meanings are "inside cultures" (as Silko says) and if the work of anthropologists is to make a study of those meanings, in order that we can make each others' belief systems intelligible to one another (as Geertz says)...THEN what? Where do we go (HOW do we go?) from here? Paul claims, above, that science's distinctive role is that of "permanent skepticism, persistent doubt about the validity of any understanding." How does this insistence on doubt play out against anthropology's attempt to find shared understandings?

Name:  Angel
Username:  akaur@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  
Date:  2003-11-13 19:45:36
Message Id:  7252
Comments:
I intend to write about the family culture in urban and rural India. I will discuss the family structure, family values and common features that I have observed in my years at home.
Name:  Beverly Burgess
Username:  Anonymous
Subject:  Culture topic
Date:  2003-11-14 22:33:05
Message Id:  7261
Comments:
I will be examining American culture and their attitude towards debt.
Name:  Flicka
Username:  fmichael@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  my study of culture
Date:  2003-11-15 11:16:42
Message Id:  7262
Comments:
I will be writing about the culture of the ballet world because it is the culture i know best, and i think it is a culture not too many people know about.
Name:  Steph Hunt
Username:  shunt@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  
Date:  2003-11-17 20:15:46
Message Id:  7298
Comments:
I was originally planning to write on the "punk kid" subculture in high schools, but what I thought would be more interesting was to write about "stoner culture," because of the extremely fascinating lexicon and of course the habits and laziness of marijuana abusers (as well as "wannabe" stoners).
Should be an interesting night. *Looks at clock...8:15...12 more hours to finish it.*
Name:  Bhumika Patel
Username:  b2patel@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  
Date:  2003-11-17 20:35:02
Message Id:  7299
Comments:
I will be observing Indian American culture among teenagers in high school since I saw a great deal of it in the high school I attended...
Name:  karen d.
Username:  kdelnash@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  culture paper
Date:  2003-11-18 04:27:05
Message Id:  7304
Comments:
This time I'm writing a paper from the heart (as opposed to my other papers which were from my brain). The culture I'm writing about is Indian culture because it seems to be the most obvious culural topic to write about, especially now. As for making the topic "strange", that isn't so hard. I'm away from home for the first time in my life, all the things that seemed easy and apparent to me are now difficult and confusing- as dramatic as that statement sounds, it's true.

I've been struggling with many aspects of Indian culture because I wasn't raised in India, I was raised here in America. I know you're not wondering why I'm not writing a paper on American culture (shame on you! I'm very American as well, hell I am tired of defending my American-ness just cause I'm brown). So my paper is about indian weddings.

To be specific, my paper is about the mendi (dancing) ceremony of Indian weddings. There are things an outsider might notice about the mendi that are strange, but not really strange to Indians. These things include obvious obseravtions like clothes, jewelry, music, and dance. Also, there are hidden events that occur.

Name:  Anne Dalke
Username:  adalke@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  abling/dis-abling
Date:  2003-11-18 15:36:24
Message Id:  7318
Comments:

Hi, friends. This week we will be reading McDermott and Varenne's essay, "Culture AS Disability" (we've also included in the packet, should you have time and interest, several other pieces by Lawrence Osborne, Susan Sontag and Paul Grobstein, each of which explores an example of the disabling effects of a particular culture). To extend this exploration, post here, please, your initial thoughts, in a few lines, about some of the disabling aspects of the culture you yourself reported on this week.....

you might also find of interest/use a piece just up, in which Varenne himself answers (in the negative) Paul's query, "can there be a culture which does not disable/disadvantage ANYONE in it?" It's called "Extra burdens in the search for new openings: on the inevitability of cultural disabilities." What a delight to have it arrive (serendipitously?) just as we turn to this query ourselves.

Name:  Ginny Costello
Username:  vcostell
Subject:  disabling
Date:  2003-11-20 09:32:49
Message Id:  7343
Comments:
One of the disabling effects of the American corporate culture is that in an effort to succeed one must conform and "fit in" and demonstrate very specific behaviors and rules associated with the business world. The disabling aspect of this culture is that one gives up something of themself to belong. A loss of true individuality prevails in the corporate culture.
Name:  Olivia
Username:  ospradli@bmc
Subject:  paper topic
Date:  2003-11-20 09:54:07
Message Id:  7344
Comments:
For my examination of a culture I writing about my experience living in Italy with an Italian family.

I played this link (though I don't think it works as a link here because I don't know how to do that yet) in class for a rather rough, but accurate, insight into what I wrote about.

http://www.kicken.com/funnyfiles2/www.kicken.com-berlusconi.swf

In response to a comment about Silko which I think pertains to McDermott and Varenne, Silko beleives stories reside both indivuals (specifically in the stomach) and culture as a collective whole. It's important not only to distinguish a one culture's story from another's but also differences in individual's stories within that culture's stories.
Another point of relavence: judging other cultures. Right or Wrong? From an anthropological point of view it's wrong. But from a human point of view....We do it very frequently under the guise of human rights.

Name:  Anita
Username:  alai@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  Culture
Date:  2003-11-20 09:56:04
Message Id:  7345
Comments:
I wrote about the culture of growing up as an first generation Asian American. I addressed the issue of having an identity crisis as an American and an Asian.
Name:  Alicia
Username:  ajones@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  Link to an article about "deep play" & thoughts about my paper
Date:  2003-11-20 19:25:10
Message Id:  7352
Comments:
Hi everyone,

A quick check-in about my paper on culture. First of all, I did not write about African American theater, instead I wrote about the culture of a women's health clinic that performs abortions as one of its services. Yeah, I know, very different from theater, but my story is about the work that I did for a number of years with a dynamic group of women in California. We have a common belief that a woman has a right to choose an abortion. We believe that it is our job to make sure that this service is safely performed, that it is kept at a reasonable cost that makes it accessible to all women, and that it be kept legal.

Now I know that everyone does not agree with the idea of abortion, but those of us who work for the right's and protection of women's reproductive health issues are committed to this cause. As a matter of fact, one of the disabling aspects of this culture is that there are people in the world who would harm us, even kill us, because they disagree. Our work is indeed "deep play." Did we feel that we had more to lose than we could ever gain? No! Not even the daily threat of harm can stop the movement that we are a part of because we are not willing to go back to the days of "coathangers and backalleys!"

Also, I found an interesting article by poet/writer/naturalist Diane Ackerman with a broader definition of deep play. Check it out via the link below:

href="http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/97/7.24.97/Ackerman.html">'Deep
play' isn't child's play, says Diane Ackerman


Alicia

Name:  Angel
Username:  akaur@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  
Date:  2003-11-22 12:43:09
Message Id:  7366
Comments:
I knew of several disabling factors of the Indian family cutlure before I began writing my paper on it. But thinking about the factors characterising our family culture, I was forced to take a closer look at the various aspects of the culture, especially disabling ones. By its very constitution, Indian family culture is patriarchal. Thus it is immediately disabling to the female sex, in the household and outside. Men are given many privileges that are withheld from women. They are given a higher status in society. The girl child is still looked down upon and female infanticide is still very much common. The culture is also disabling to children in general and to girls more than the boys. The complete unquestionable authority of the parents leaves the children with not too much room in which to explore their own thought and decision making capabilities.
These are the main disabling aspects of the Indian family culture.
Name:  Anne Dalke
Username:  adalke@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  "The Disability Gulag"
Date:  2003-11-23 13:11:23
Message Id:  7374
Comments:

You'll find in today's (11/23/03) New York Times Magazine a highly relevant and marvelously articulate article by Harriet McBryde Johnson, "The Disability Gulag," which argues that for herself and others w/ severe disabilities, having needs shouldn't mean losing all freedom. She begins not w/ the accomodations needed for own disability, however, but w/ the story of her grandmother's attitude:

" Why does an independent thinker set such store on conventional behavior? Why did she marry a ridiculously steady Presbyterian? I think it's fear. Fear that one day something will go wrong and she, too, will be taken from her family, snatched from the place she has made in the world, robbed of her carefuly constructed self and locked up for life. I know that fear. I share it."

Talk about culture AS disability. And talk about the need for...

change.

Name:  anne
Username:  adalke@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  "ostrich intellects"
Date:  2003-11-23 13:16:57
Message Id:  7375
Comments:

The Sunday papers were for me today filled w/ resonances of conversations we've been having in this class. Two were from The Philadelphia Inquirer (11/23/03); the first of these was Karen Heller's column on "Ostrich Intellects"--a reminder of what seems to me a keynote of this course (sounded in the fairy tale section, again in "tacit knowing," now again as we ask you to explore and interrogate a culture you know): the need to claim what it is we know experientially, through our own experience, rather than relying on others' accounts. Heller says

"The serious scholar turns to the great philsophers, leaders and artists for illumination and personal interpretation rather than relying on the distillation of their work by others. She knows that primary sources are the cornerstone of a classical education. The same can be said of a full and thoughtful life, that a rich existence depends on knowwledge attained as close to firsthand as possible. We are witnessing the death of primary experiences."

Name:  Anne Dalke
Username:  adalke@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  "deep play"
Date:  2003-11-23 13:25:45
Message Id:  7376
Comments:

The last article in today's Inquirer (11/23/03) which put me in mind of our conversations here is an account of Princeton students traveling to New Jersey State Prison to engage in chess matches with inmates there:

"Many inmates say they enjoy chess because it is a metaphor for real-life situations where they often were unable to come out on top. 'If you make one wrong move, you are at a disadvantage, and sometimes you can't recover. . . . That's chess, and that's the way it really is.'"

In trying to think of alternatives to this sort of "deep play," where there's no "back-up," no "way out," I was reminded of all the discussion in the Working Group on Emergent Systems about "distributed systems," complex networks of interaction in which there is ALWAYS a back-up, always an alternative, always...

another way to go. My query now: might such a system mitigate "deep play"--that is, avoid the sort of "check-mate" from which you can't recover?

Name:  Olivia
Username:  ospradli@bmc
Subject:  disability
Date:  2003-11-24 16:38:38
Message Id:  7385
Comments:
Throughout reading Culture as Disability I was reminded of an article by Mary Midgley: Trying out One's New Sword.
"All of us are, more or less, in trouble today about trying to understand cultures strange to us. We hear constantly of alien customs. We see changes in our lifetime which would have astonished our parents. I want to discuss here one very shourt way of dealing with this difficulty, a drastic way which many people now theoretically favor. It consists in simply denying that we can never understand any culture except our own well enough to make judgements about it. Those who recommend this hold that the world is sharply divided into seperate societies, sealed units, each with it's own system of thought. They feel that the respect and tolerance due form one system to another forbids us ever to take up a critical position to any other culture. Moral judgement, they suggest is a kind of coinage valid only in its country of origin."
Midgley goes on to argue that not judging other cultures "paralyses a great mass of our most valuable thinking". Perpetuates cultural disability not within cultures, but between cultures.
Perhaps I will stray slightly from the Italians and explore Midgley in greater depth.
The full article can be found by searching google-I no longer have the link.
Name:  Flicka
Username:  fmichael@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  Judging other cultures
Date:  2003-11-25 16:33:59
Message Id:  7395
Comments:
Our discussion in class today really made me think about how we judge other cultures, whether we have the right to do so, and the changes within certain cultures. I believe that we do not have the right to judge other cultures, because what may seem barbaric to us may seem perfectly normal to another culture. However, I think that when a tradition of a culture involves killing other people, that is just going too far. I realize that I think this because of the way I was raised and the culture in which I was raised.
However, I think that all cultures and people should be open to new ideas and new cultures. There is a way to teach people about other cultures without forcing the beliefs on the people. We talked in the beginning of this class about how it's hard for people to change because they are scared. Many cultures are worried that if they open up their minds, they will be corrupted by modern ideas and concepts. But is it necessarily bad for cultures to change? No, it is inevitable that all cultures will change at some point in time. Therefore, I think all cultures should keep an open mind about new ideas because they might actually be useful to them.
Of course, I realize this is all idealistic. It's like telling people not to judge other cultures. You should *try* not to judge other cultures because you come from a different background. However, it is natural people to compare the culture they know to the culture they are observing. And there will always be differences of opinions between people. The important thing to remember is not to force your opinion on other people.
Name:  Anne Dalke
Username:  adalke@brynmawr.edu
Subject:  thinking about thinking...
Date:  2003-11-26 10:27:54
Message Id:  7400
Comments:

I was telling the McBrides, yesterday, about a faculty discussion which seemed very relevant to our on-going discussion in this class about what it means to "think." See both Sentiment vs. Statistics for an account of the conversation and relation between narrative and numbers, redux for an account of my thinking thereafter.

Enjoy the break from thinking that this week will provide...
see you guys thereafter--
Anne




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