Since the beginning, the cultural concepts and culture itself engaged many in the conversation how to properly grasp and name cultural concepts and how to settle them inside a picture of the organizing rules that underpin a category of tangible institutions or a domain of holistic structure. Based on these conversations many theories and approaches began to appear and in a peculiar way, it divided the anthropological world into two camps: the ones who led discussions for culture and the ones who had arguments against culture. The problem was that one camp perceived some implications of the concept within a certain context undesirable which was not so prevalent as the other camp supposed. The foundation of this problem was rooted in the way people share their learned routines (Brumann, 1999). In the mid 1970s, an idea was created which Sahlins called the “fashionable idea that there is nothing usefully called a culture” (Sahlins, 1993, p.15). Another thinker of this era, Abu-Lughod (1991), propagates writing against culture, where he provides this name to the entire motion of writing against culture which is well portrayed by Fernandez (1994). Before comparing this disciplinary discourse with normative anthropological formulations of history, it would be useful to provide a perspective of how it progressed. It turns out that the detractors are more concerned with specific applications of the culture principle than with the concept itself.
Brumann, in his Writing for Culture (1999), is contend that it is possible to separate the concept from particular misuses and determine what led to them historically.
The biggest problem of this critique on culture is that it implies boundedness, uniformity, consistency, steadiness, and form. Real world, unlike culture, is specified as more variable and conflicting place to be which is full of contradictions, in other words, the opposite of culture. Appadurai provides his take on what culture is “the noun culture appears to privilege
the sort of sharing, agreeing, and bounding that fly in the face of the facts of unequal knowledge and the differential prestige of lifestyles, and to discourage attention to the worldviews and agency of those who are marginalized or dominated” (Appadurai, 1996, p.12). Brumann (1999) adds to the argument that the traditional understanding of distinct cultural patterns prioritizes common characteristics over changing processes, inner discrepancies, disputes, and tensions. Clifford identifies himself with this statement when he claims that “culture orders phenomena in ways that privilege the coherent, balanced, and
“authentic” aspects of shared life. Culture is enduring, traditional, structural rather than contingent, syncretic, and historical. Culture is a process of ordering, not of disruption”
(Clifford, 1988, p.235). Then he develops on the point of fluidness and change within the reality as he compares culture to a living organism which is prone to evolve and alter. This statement is supported by Friedman as he says that “the most-dangerously misleading quality of the notion of culture is that it literally flattens out the extremely varied ways in which the production of meaning occurs in the contested field of social existence” (Friedman, 1994, p.207).
According to the collage of statements above, we may perceive the culture as a fluid, almost a living system with shared patterns being in balance with one another. There is also a bit different viewpoint of culture by Harris (1975), when he says that culture represents a certain type of living of a group of people which has characteristics of structured and repeating beliefs and assumptions. Keesing (1981) adds to the statement that culture is a term that applies to a person's acquired and collected knowledge. A culture is defined as the interpersonally transferred behavioral patterns that are unique to a specific ethnic community.
On the idea of social group and transmitted patterns develops Peoples and Bailey (2012) with the opinion that culture is a shared knowledge and conduct of a group of people that has been passed down through the generations. In an intriguing way, Kroeber and Kluckhohn sums up the community and habitual essence of culture when claiming that “culture embraces all the manifestations of social habits of a community, the reactions of the individual as affected by the habits of the group in which he lives, and the products of human activities as determined by these habits” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1985, p.82). Linton (1936) continues with this view and reinforces the idea of culture having shared patterns, sum total of ideas and responses which are gained via education, and which the society shares in varying degrees.
However, not all anthropologists agreed with the interpretation of culture mentioned above and had a plenty of doubts if such concepts should not be concerned as obsolete. For instance, Barth (1994) thought that it would be better to stop putting so much emphasis on the culture itself and rather concentrate our viewpoint to individuals, processes, and actions. With another statement followed Abu-Lughod (1991) who claimed that anthropological discourse gives cultural difference the aspect of being self-evident. She then believes that it is worth considering the consequences that anthropology must bear when it is maintaining and preserving the idea of having distinct and diverse cultures from our own. She also questioned the way that culture perceives concepts like race with saying “despite its anti-essentialist intent, the culture concept retains some of the tendencies to freeze difference possessed by concepts like race” (Abu-Lughod, 1991, p.144). This point of view shared Appadurai (1996)
when he viewed concept of culture as an actual reality though it tends to resemble any number of biologisms, especially ethnicity that has been largely left for theoretical concepts.
Consequently, the distance between the two camps widened. Ingold commented on this predicament that “in effect, the concept of culture operates as a distancing device, setting up a radical disjunction between ourselves, rational observers of the human condition, and those other people, enmeshed in their traditional patterns of belief and practice, whom we profess to observe and study” (Ingold, 1993, p.212). Other fellow anthropologists followed on the same note. “In global terms the culturalization of the world is about how a certain group of professionals located at central positions identify the larger world and order it according to a central scheme of things” (Friedman, 1994, p. 208). “The essentialism of our discourse is not only inherent in our conceptualizations of “culture” but it reflects as well our vested disciplinary interests in characterizing exotic otherness” (Keesing, 1994, p.303). The delicate question posed by Ingold “Would it not be preferable to move in the opposite direction, to recover that foundational continuity, and from that basis to challenge the hegemony of an alienating discourse? If so, then the concept of culture, as a key term of that discourse, will have to go” (Ingold, 1993, p. 230) even embraces the state of skepticism. According to Clifford (1988), concept of culture has outlived itself. On this note, Abu-Lughod (1991) followed that apparently, anthropologists may think about how to write against culture. Moore opposed to this idea when he stated, “even if one wanted to, it would be impossible to trash the culture concept because it is so deeply rooted in the history of ideas and in the discipline of anthropology” (Moore, 1994, p.373).
As we can see, a fundamental skepticism regarding the legitimacy of the culture concept, supported by the numerous deceptive connections is therefore assumed to contain, has been a significant cliché in anthropological debate (Brumann, 1999). Without a doubt, anthropologists have perpetrated many errors, which are mentioned above, in their theoretical and ethnographic work. Though, Brumann (1999) does not believe that the root cause of it is the culture concept.
In Writing for Culture, Brumann delves deeper into this subject while saying “except for the occasional use of an outmoded word (such as “race” or, arguably “civilization”) and for male bias, these definitions do not deviate fundamentally from the modern ones” (Brumann, 1999, p.4). If we take into account the definition of culture in anthropological essays and works, we could see the pattern that they commonly reference Tylor's formulation (2010), usually accompanied by lengthy remarks (see Harris, 1975; Keesing, 1981; Peoples and Bailey, 2012), however, this is often done without including an additional definition (Barnard and Spencer, 1996; Goodenough, 1996; Seymour-Smith, 2005). Brumann (1999) questions if there is a significant difference between what current and traditional cultural anthropologists consider to be the underlying meaning of the term culture, or if they just perceive the same thing differently. The point which Brumann (1999) is trying to find out is if the rules which apply to the modern take on culture also apply to the elder ones. Considering the provided quotes and interpretation of culture by Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952), no one refuses the fact that a culture has a well-defined limitation and is homogeneous. Brumann (1999) finds it important to say that there was nothing which was clearly said by mentioned definitions.
Instead, certain aspects are left available for inquiry.
One may claim that all the definitions presuppose distinct cultures by assigning a culture to a particular entity whereas nobody says that these subjects must be rigidly defined in order to be allocated a culture. Most definitions also lack the balance of dispersion required for defining a community. However, the few who discuss it do so in terms of a “greater or lesser degree” of sharing. Considering the majority of definitions in Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s book consider culture as a group of distinguishable components and describe it with a word followed by of and in case of a list of components, it is sum total of (Brumann, 1999). According to Herskovits (1948) and Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952), culture is basically a concept that represents the entire body of ideology, actions, awareness, sanctions, ideals, and goals that characterize every people's way of life. That is, although the student may regard culture as objectively definable, in the end, it consists of the stuff that people have, the things they do, and the things they say. In this case, Brumann (1999) believes that a variety of seldom debated yet strong stereotypes inherent in practices of ethnographic literature, traditions that predate the discipline of anthropology, must be charged. These beliefs require the life of the universe as a mosaic of territorially bounded, distinct societies. In most traditional ethnographic use, a culture was clearly understood to be associated with what was previously known as a nation. There were also established entities which were regarded as normal, inwardly homogenous, and uncontentious for classification, exactly in the same way they had been in most pre- and nonanthropological ethnography (Brumann, 1999). For instance, the concept of race is shown to be empirically baseless, was tremendously exploited, and to some extent, it continues to obstruct even those physical anthropologists who use new, nonracist approaches to evaluate human biodiversity (Keita and Kittles, 1997).
When discussing the definition of culture, it is essential to differentiate between culture in general and culture(s) in a particular context. The first one applies to the universal ability of people to exchange patterns of thought, sensing, and behaving among other people who they are in a close contact with. It is not quite straightforward and is stated only in a few definitions. Additionally, it appears to be extracted from the second sense which is the one that has the biggest focus. A culture is described here as the collection of taught patterns which are indicative of a defined community of individuals. These individuals are often included subtly or specifically. Any other culture presupposes the presence of other collections of rituals shared by other classes of individuals, resulting in diverse societies. In reality, the discussion is almost entirely focused on this second meaning. The act of distinguishing distinct communities is considered empirically baseless, logically deceptive, and morally objectionable by opponents of the definition. In order to define a community, we must separate this collection of objects from witnessed cases of thinking and action, choosing what happens consistently rather than what is singular (Brumann, 1999). Since no two objects are exactly alike in the scientific universe, the outcome of every such action is still debatable, and therefore one cannot claim the presence of Japanese culture any more than one can prove the existence of Baroque style. Cultures are fluid systems, so they do not come with any organic borders rather than they are given ones. This predicament causes the effect that cultures no longer possess a group of elements which defines them and thus become less
ultimate and precise. However, there is an on-going, controversial debate where exactly those borders are.
The three graphics depict the heart of the challenge of defining cultures in Figure 1 which was created by Brumann (1999).
Figure 1 Three hypothetical distributions of features across individuals (Brumann, 1999, p.7)
In the Figure 1, there are individuals represented by capital letters, and identifiable styles of perceiving, experiencing, and acting are represented by numbers. The first graphic portraits the complete sharing of elements 1 to 6 between individuals A through F and elements 7-12 between G to L. It is not hard to recognize cultures here since elements 1 to 6 reflect one culture, whereas elements 7 to 12 represent the other. This partition is the only conceivable means of separating cultures because the two classes of traits, as well as the two categories of persons who exhibit them, are perfectly distinct. In comparison, characteristics in the middle graphic are uniformly scattered through people, and it is difficult to make out cultures in the same unproblematic manner or even in some persuasive way. The issues begin with a scenario like the one shown in the last graphic. As we can see from the last distribution, there is no compact chunk of elements though there are parts, elements between 1-6 and 8-12, that might indicate two miscellaneous cultures. But the problem remains, meaning that both cultures will
have characteristics that are often identified with those of the other. Furthermore, element 7 is not in a direct association in any of two cultures whereas the person D engages in each culture with a majority of the first culture. In other words, there is no simple way how to portray a dispersion of acquired patterns within individuals. In the last graphic, it gets a bit more real though it is still a very simplified way how to bring any rules to woolly clustering of patterns.
There are many culture skeptics who perceive clustering of patterns in the middle and the first graphic very inadequate and resist to accept this clustering in any way. It is quite the same whether you perceive a glass is half-full or half-empty since no precise answer to this problem really exists as meaning either ideal uniformity or perfect randomness of distribution (Brumann, 1999).
In conjunction to the previous paragraph which provided more of a statistical point of view, the idea of socially transmitted knowledge (see Harris, 1975; Keesing, 1981; Peoples and Bailey, 2012) will described on Borofsky’s ethnographic fieldwork on Pukapuka. He conducted research on a small Polynesian atoll where he discovered that people living on the atol were all familiar with one particular story. Surprisingly enough, when Borofsky asked them about how they interpret the story, it varied enormously. And even one person, if having asked to tell the story twice, interpreted it every time a bit differently. These would differ from what the same individual introduced when sharing the story in front of an audience. As a result, no specific plot element was used in any way of the story (Borofsky, 1994). However, among the stories shared by Pukapuka people, a general family similarity is difficult to ignore (Brumann, 1999). In contrast to Borofsky, Brumann (1999) does not think it is an issue to refer to this repertory as Pukapuka culture. Reason being is how frequently elements occur in the tale and what constitution they provide as an ethnographic depiction of a distinct aspect of Pukapuka culture. This excellently illustrates how establishing anthropology as the science of culture does not imply that culture has to be the primary subject of study. Anthropologists are naturally interested in how events, actions, individuals, and processes interact with culture, as well as what culture does to them. Considering removing the culture(s) on the other hand, it leaves them without a term to describe certain clusters which are always present and play an important function in today’s world (Brumann, 1999). The statement above goes hand-in-hand with what Hannerz claims “the concept of culture has undoubtedly exerted an influence beyond the borders of the discipline” (Hannerz, 1996, p.30) and thus many individuals
“discovered” culture and started to believe anthropologists that culture can be found anywhere. Sahlins states that “the cultural self-consciousness is one of the more remarkable phenomena of world history in the late twentieth century. Culture, the word itself, or some local equivalent, is on everyone’s lips” (Sahlins, 1993, p.3). Given that, it seems some individuals, including ones in position of power, tend to desire culture in the limited, normative, and unchangeable form which many anthropologists currently oppose.
Furthermore, tradition has been a political and judicial fact, necessitating every effort to legitimize more fragmented conceptions to deal with enormous structural rigidity (Brumann, 1999). This, it is considered, must not deter anthropologists and society from dismantling such concepts as Brumann (1999) in this case decided to put emphasis on three fundamental insights about culture.
To begin with, cultural social replication is often difficult and never assured. It's understandable that if there was any element Foucault attempted to disprove, it was the concept of human authoring, and what was appropriate for the extremely wide rhetorical structures he investigated would not necessarily be appropriate for most culture (Brumann, 1999). Second, tradition has its boundaries and that is why it never discriminated the peculiar.
However, thinking of culture in respect of a bunch of tools which can be used in a variety of cases, but cannot do anything on its own, is no longer contentious within the context of relationship between structure and entity. If the number of articles published in major journals is any indication, cross-cultural experiments contributing to the discovery of universals have not done much better. Lastly, Brumann (1999) presents the last insight about culture where he argues that it is not consistently a case of ethnic culture, nor is it connected to the identity.
Brumann summarizes the debate about culture concepts and their meaning by suggesting that
“we retain the noun culture in its singular and plural form and clarify for those non-anthropologists who are willing to listen what the phenomenon so designated really is since it requires very clear and definite formulations about all the things it is not” (Brumann, 1999, p.13). He adds to this claim that without a doubt, the word culture has been and remains to be misapplied, particularly when cultural conservatives start talking about it. Staying with culture, while emphasizing its difficult replication, the constraints placed here by the human, and its distinction from ethnicity and identity, would allow anthropologists to maintain the mutual understanding that generated inside of anthropology and take advantage of the fact that people are gradually understanding what anthropologists imply when they use the term.